A study suggests that East Asians perceive emotion in faces differently from Westerners, casting doubt on the thesis that human facial expressions are largely universal across cultures.
Fifteen white European students and 15 East Asians rated nearly 5,000 randomly generated facial expressions, presented via 3-D computer animation. They chose one of six emotions—happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, anger or sadness—and rated the intensity, or chose "don't know." Those six emotions have long been thought to be the building blocks of human facial communication.
Though the Europeans reacted with relative uniformity to the six categories, the East Asian students showed far more disagreement, especially where fear, disgust, anger and surprise were concerned. These displayed substantial overlap, suggesting that those categories aren't fundamental to the Asian way of "reading" faces. In contrast, muscle movements signifying happiness and sadness were cross-cultural.
Another distinction was that East Asians looked more to muscles around the eyes as early indicators of strong emotion.
"Facial Expressions of Emotion Are Not Culturally Universal," Rachael E. Jack, Oliver G.B. Garrod, Hui Yu, Roberto Caldara and Philippe G. Schyns, PNAS (April 16 online)
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