Lay theories of pride, joy, sadness, jealousy, and envy in Spanish subjects, and a comparison with Italians'.

120 Spanish university students filled a questionnaire describing events typical of 5 emotions. Subjects attributed to same-sex or to opposite-sex protagonists aspects of the emotional experience, using category-lists of cognate items - e.g., “Joy, happiness, euphoria, pride, cheerfulness”. Subjects judged events defined either as “very salient” on the basis of results obtained in previous studies, or as “less salient”. Results showed that LT expressed by subjects are rich and complex. Ss' beliefs, and their “richness”, vary as a function of emotion constellation, of its hedonic tone (e.g., negative constellations were typically more articulate), as well as of salient features of the judged event (e.g., expressing one’s emotions characterize positive constellations; attempts at controlling them characterize mostly negative constellations, especially jealousy and envy). Men and women overall express similar “egalitarian” theories; gendered beliefs were however obtained. A comparison between Spanish and Italian subjects revealed some interesting cultural differences.