Emotions Across Cultures with Batja Mesquita

What if emotions aren’t just something we feel on our own, but something we do—together? In this episode, we sit down with Batja Mesquita, author of Between Us: How Cultures Create Emotions, to explore the idea of emotions as not just internal experiences, but relational ones. Drawing from cross-cultural research and personal stories, Batja challenges the Western idea that emotions live solely inside us, waiting to be expressed. Instead, she paints a richer, more connected picture—one where emotions are shaped between people, and deeply influenced by the cultural worlds we live in.

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Batja Mesquita is a social psychologist, an affective scientist, and a pioneer of cultural psychology. She is a professor of psychology at the University of Leuven, Belgium, and director of the Center for Social and Cultural Psychology at the University of Leuven. Mesquita is one of the world’s leading authorities on the psychological study of cultural differences in emotions. Her most recent research focuses on the role of emotions in multicultural societies. She studies how emotions affect the belonging of minoritized youth in middle schools, and the social and economic integration of “newcomers” (i.e. newly arrived immigrants). Mesquita has been a consultant for UNICEF and the WHO, and most recently, she was a member of the core group of scientific advisors for the Happiness and Well-being (SEH) Project, and initiative of the Vatican in partnership with the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).

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Discover more about Batja Mesquita and her work on her website: BatjaMesquita.com

Find the book Batja mentions about the story of her mother’s time of hiding from the Nazis during World War II — The Cut Out Girl: A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found by Bart van Es

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Produced by Zach Van Dyke