SIETAR-Kansai - Past Monthly Programs

September 2003
The Personal and Social Costs of Emotion Management on the Job in Japan

* As was announced above, we will invite Dr. David Matsumoto for the September meeting. Please note that the meeting is not held on Sunday this time. We will be looking forward to meeting many of you!

Date:
September 16 2003, Tuesday 7:00pm-9:00pm

Presenter:
Dr. David Matsumoto
San Francisco State University

Place:
Takatsuki Sogo Shimin Koryu Center
1 minute walk from JR Takatsuki St.
Tel: 0726-85-3721

Fee:
500 yen for members
500 yen for students
1000 yen for non-members

Language:
English

Description of the Presentation:
Human emotion is one of the most powerful forces of nature. It can cause construction or destruction. It can bring people together or set them apart. It can be used for good or evil. It can lead to the highest forms of art, poetry, music, literature or to war. For these reasons one of the most important goals of any society and culture is to regulate emotions to maximize the potential for survival. Cultures and societies do this through a process of emotion management that can be called emotion regulation, and this has been true throughout the history of civilization. Work organizations have their own organizational culture and how each company manages emotions is an important aspect of their organizational culture. In fact traditional Japanese labor practices are steeped in emotion management techniques. Little attention, however, has been paid to the personal and social consequences of those emotion management practices in Japanese companies. In this presentation I will discuss what some of those consequences are both to the individual and to society at large, with the explicit goal of identifying ways to improve individual and social conditions through better emotion regulation practices.

Profile of the Presenter:
David Matsumoto is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Culture and Emotion Research Laboratory at San Francisco State University. He earned his B.A. from the University of Michigan, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He has studied emotion, human interaction, and culture for over 15 years, and is a recognized expert in this field. He is the author of approximately 250 works on culture and emotion, including original research articles, paper presentations, books, book chapters, videos, and assessment instruments. He has made invited addressed to professional and scientific groups in the U.S. and internationally. He also serves as an intercultural consultant to various domestic and international businesses. Dr. Matsumoto is also very active in the world of Olympic sport Judo. Currently he serves as the Development Chairman for the United States Judo Federation, and as an Official Researcher of the International Judo Federation. He has been the Team Leader for the Judo team representing the United States at several World Championships including the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. Among his most recent works include: The New Japan: Debunking Seven Cultural Stereotypes (2002, Intercultural Press), The handbook of culture and psychology (2001, Oxford Univ. Press), Culture and psychology (2nd ed.)(2000, Brooks Cole Publishing Co.),etc.

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