Are Emotions Universal? The Colonial Critique Attached to the Question

Psyche puts the question plainly: are our emotions universal? A video by Then & Now argues that two landmark studies upended the prevailing view of emotions, and that in doing so they challenged colonial stereotypes. Those two halves belong together. A theory holding that a given expression means the same thing everywhere is also a claim about whose emotional life supplies the baseline for everyone else. Saying the older picture carried colonial assumptions does not by itself settle how much of emotional life is shared and how much is learned, but it changes what is at stake in the answer: the argument stops being only about what faces do and becomes one about who defined the default.