[1]Display rules are a social group or culture's informal norms that distinguish how one should express oneself.
They function as a way to maintain the social order of a given culture, creating an expected standard of behaviour to guide people in their interactions.
[2] Members of a social group learn these cultural standards at a young age which determine when one would express certain emotions, where and to what extent.
[4] Emotions can be defined as brief, specific, and multidimensional responses to challenges or opportunities that are important to both personal and social goals.
The selected emotions can guide a specific goal-directed behavior that can either support or hinder social relationships.
The fourth component is the subjective feeling,[3][6] which refers to the quality that defines the experience of a specific emotion by expressing it by words or other methods.
[5] The results revealed that both the other cultures and isolated communities could effectively match and detect the emotional meaning of the different faces.
"[7] Unique individuals within cultures acquire differences affecting displays of emotions emphasized by one's status, role, and diverse behaviours.
The affect theory argues that emotions that promote important cultural ideals will become focal in their social interactions.
[8] High and low-contact cultures also vary in the amount of physical interaction and direct contact there is during one-on-one communication.
[12] Parents' affect and control influence their children's display rule through both positive and negative responses.
[11] Mcdowell and Parke (2005) suggested that parents who exert more control over their children's emotions/behaviour would deprive them of many opportunities to learn about appropriate vs. inappropriate emotional/rule displays.
There are few factors influencing the children's decision to either control or express an emotion that they are experiencing including the type of audience.
In fact, depending on if children are in the presence of peers or of family (i.e. mother or father), they will report different control over their expression of emotions.
During a child's grade school years, they can become increasingly more aware of the accepted display rules that are found in their social environment.
[6] Emotional intelligence is a concept that is defined by four skills:[5][14] Age plays an important role in the development of display rules.
According to a study by Jones,[15] social interactions are the main factor in the creation and understanding of display rules.
A study conducted by Malatesta and Haviland[12] demonstrated that a baby can have 10 different categories for facial expression: However, fear and disgust will develop progressively during childhood.
They are complex facial expressions that require knowledge and understanding and must be learned, not copied; this is why not everybody is afraid of the same things.
At this time, they understand the importance of non-verbal communication, and shape the manner in which emotion may be expressed, with this change in perception, children will internalize different rules.
A study presented by the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology showed that nurses working in the same environment are more likely to share the same display rules in order to achieve an organisational objective.