Facial Expressions Are "Not Global"

An anonymous reader sends in a BBC report on new research out of Glasgow University, which detected differences in how facial expressions are read between Westerners and East Asians. Using eye tracking, the researchers determined that "people from different cultural groups observe different parts of the face when interpreting expression. East Asians participants tended to focus on the eyes of the other person, while Western subjects took in the whole face, including the eyes and the mouth." Interestingly, the researchers point out that the emoticons used online by the two groups reflect this difference.

Comments

In other news.....

[nomso]

people are indeed different.

Interesting

[sakdoctor]

^_^

Re:Interesting

[Canazza]

Cross Culture: (.)(.)

Re:Interesting

[gardyloo]

Why are those eyes downcast?

Re:Interesting

[Altus]

Gravity

Similar Article (Metro)

[mancunian_nick]

In today's Metro, there's an interesting article on this same subject. When we use emoticons such as ;-), people on the other side of the world shrug their shoulders. That's because Westerners read faces differently to Eastern people experts claim. It goes on later - Whereas we tend to use the mouth to express emotions such as :-) for happy and :-( for sad, Eastern emoticons use the eyes ^.^ for happy and ;.; for sad. The findings could mean concepts of 'universal expression' of emotions are wrong - and do not take into account cultural boundaries, the experts said. Interesting but again who are these so-called experts. According to the article, only 13 Europeans and 13 people from China, Japan and Korea were asked to put a series of faces into categories such as sad and surprised. Hardly a global representation I'd have thought but then again statistics, statistics and statistics, as the saying goes. I'm sure even Mr Spock would have thought this was 'fascinating'. :)

Re:Similar Article (Metro)

[the_raptor]

As a psychology student I can already tell you that the idea of "universal expression" only lives on in pop culture, the idea was invalidated in science a fair while ago. While it is debatable whether emotions are natural or culturally generated it is complete uncontroversial to say that expression of emotion is culturally bound.

Just look at something like Amok in Malaysia.

Additionally there have been many studies that show a difference between how Westerners view faces and how non-Westerners do. This study is only interesting in that it puts forward an answer as to why the difference might exist. This is a major issue in psychology because so much research has used white male college students as subjects.

Re:Similar Article (Metro)

[MindlessAutomata]

As a psychology student I can already tell you that the idea of "universal expression" only lives on in pop culture, the idea was invalidated in science a fair while ago. While it is debatable whether emotions are natural or culturally generated it is complete uncontroversial to say that expression of emotion is culturally bound.

I have not personally heard this, and everything I've heard contradicts that. What is this?

Finally, the study in the article establishes that faces are READ differently, not that people are making different facial expressions. This is a big difference from the headline being given, but that's science reporting for you.

Facial expressions are, for the most part, universal; from what I see Ekman's studies have for the most part still held up. What are you basing your claim that the idea of universal facial expressions has been "invalidated by science a fair while ago?"

Misleading title

[Attila Dimedici]

The title of the summary says that facial expressions are not global, but the summary says that the way people read facial expressions varies in different geographical areas. A more interesting test would be how accurate people from East Asia are at reading the facial expressions of Westerners and vice versa.

A difference, you say?

[Wireless Joe]

At first I was (:^O)

but then I \(^o^)/

Tracking and expression aren't the same thing

[wytcld]

This is about differences in how cultures track expressions, not in the expressions themselves. There's long been solid evidence that basic facial expressions are universal across human cultures, in their natural form. So if you're really smiling, it's the same muscles involved in much the same way, no matter what culture you're in. However, people also pretend to smile when it's not real. It's long been know that counterfeit expressions don't use all the same muscles, or the same overall pattern. People can be trained to spot this difference quite effectively.

Now, with this recent research showing that different cultures monitor expressions differently, this implies that good counterfeiting is going to be specific to which monitoring patterns it is trying to fool. That would be interesting research. It should show, for instance, that people are better at counterfeiting expressions to other people from their same culture. People from another culture should be better at seeing through your counterfeit expressions than people from your own culture, if that other culture focuses on different parts of the face than yours.

That cultures would focus differently fits with the extensive research on "joint attention." From infancy, we're wired to look at what we see other people looking at. We're very, very good a adopting the perceptual patterns of those around us, at a level that's almost automatic.

But contra the broad claim here, genuine emotions expressed through facial expressions are not culture-specific, but universal to humanity, essentially genetic.

ah, the inscrutable asian and the volatile gaijin

[circletimessquare]

http://www.csupomona.edu/~tassi/gestures.htm

mutual incomprehensibility

co-author site

[mzs]

Here is the site of one of the co-authors:

http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/staff/index.php?id=RJ002

The article in question is not quite published yet:

Jack, R. E., Blais, C., Scheepers, C., Schyns, P. G., & Caldara, R. (in press) Cultural Confusions Show Facial Expressions are Not Universal Current Biology

Here is an earlier one using the same methodologies (PDF):

http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/docs/download.php?type=PUBLS&id=1404

It is about where western and eastern people look at faces using eye tracking when for example learning or recognizing a face. There were some subtle differences.

Bad examples...

[denzacar]

Comparing caricatures with realistic depiction of humans? Come on... That ain't even a proper straw-man.

Try these instead:

Japanse Spiderman manga vs. American Spiderman Comic.

Note how lips, nostrils and ears are generally unarticulated (particularly noses and ears that often are not present at all, or are just hinted) and how much more detailed american (comic) faces are.
On the other hand... manga artists attribute much greater attention to eyes and hair.

You can tell the character by his/her eyes immediately.
Bigger and more detailed the eyes - more innocent the character. Slits with a tiny dot for a pupil - evil fucker.

Definitions

[readin]

The article did not address the questions of definitions. Do we define words like "fear" and "surprise" the same way? Fear and surprise can be related - and where does shock fit in? Perhaps its not just a question of interpreting the emotions differently, but also an issue of applying different words to the same emotion. I see a shocked expression, but I have to assign it a value of "fear" or "surprise" - even if I have a perfect empathy for the emotion expressed in the picture, the word I choose will depend on how I've seen that word used in the past.

Given that the test was given to people from different backgrounds, they likely grew up speaking different languages. Even though presumably the East Asian subjects may have learned English, their understandings of some English words may be based on translations of their native words, and the words may not be exact matches.

One might suggest that this problem can be dodged by asking the subjects for a suggested physical response rather than for a word. Instead of "Is this person feeling 'fear' or 'surprise'" you might ask "Is this person thinking of running away or is this person thinking that he didn't expect what just happened" but even then cultural expectations about behavior would play a heavy role.