 These researchers initiated what we may call the “cultural variability” strand of social constructionism, related to the thesis that emotions are different in several essential respects in different cultures. These differences have since been shown with respect to both the emotion lexicon (e.g., Russell 1991; Wierzbicka 1999) and the diagnostic characteristics of emotions (e.g., Mesquita &amp; Frijda 1992; Mesquita &amp; Parkinson forthcoming).