Emotional experience in Italy, Spain, and Cuba: A cross-cultural comparison

A semi-structured questionnaire was administered to students belonging to three different cultural contexts — Italy, Spain and Cuba — to determine what emotional experiences characterize their emotional life and which antecedents generate them. Overall results suggest that cultural context has no decisive influence on how the different emotions are experienced and on their principal components. On the contrary, culture influences the frequency at which the different typologies of emotions occur and are experienced. In fact, positive emotions are reported more frequently by Cuban compared to Italian and Spanish participants. Some minor differences emerged between the three countries regarding antecedents, intensity and duration of emotional experience and some emotional reactions.