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

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)

[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?"

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.