Mesquita, De Leersnyder and Boiger replace the image of culture as an external modifier of universal emotions with a processual account in which emotions are made through recurrent social relations and culturally patterned situations. Their central contribution is the concept of emotional fit: affective experience can align more or less closely with culturally prevalent patterns, and that alignment changes through participation, migration and social contact. The chapter draws on cross-cultural comparisons, diary studies, survey data and acculturation research, but its methodological argument is more radical than simple comparison. Context should not be controlled away as noise because context partly constitutes the phenomenon. Emotional episodes are therefore relational accomplishments embedded in moral orders, interactional expectations and culturally valued forms of action. This position bridges cultural psychology with ecological and situated approaches to cognition. It also challenges decontextualised experimental designs by proposing that emotional processes should be studied where they are socially produced: in practices, relationships and environments rather than as isolated responses.
