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Human facial expressions aren't universal

15:04 13 August 2009 by Ewen Callaway
Facial expressions, Charles Darwin argued in The Expression of the Emotions in 
Man and Animals, are a universal window into emotion. But new research 
challenges that notion, showing that east Asian people struggle to recognise 
facial expressions that western Caucasians attribute to fear and disgust. By 
focusing on eyes and brows, Asians miss subtle cues conveyed via the mouth.

"We question the universality of these specific signals," says Rachael Jack, a 
cognitive psychologist at the University of Glasgow, UK, whose team analysed 
how 13 Caucasian and 13 east Asian men and women interpret a standardised set 
of facial expressions, thought to be racially neutral, which is used widely in 
research.

Caucasian volunteers had no problem distinguishing between expressions of 
surprise, fear, disgust and anger. Asians, however, frequently confused fear 
for surprise and disgust for anger, Jack's team found.

An eye-tracking tool and software indicated that while Caucasians tended to 
look at all parts of a face equally, Asians alternated their gaze between the 
left and right eyes.

Meanwhile, computer modelling of different facial expressions found that the 
mouth is a much better telltale of a particular emotion than eyes and brows. 
Relying solely on the eyes, the model found, creates ambiguity between fear and 
surprise, and also anger and disgust – reflecting the mistakes the east Asian 
volunteers made in the experiment.

Go east

Jack's results don't mean that people from east Asian countries are blind to 
facial expressions of fear and disgust, but that there may be a different way 
for these signals to be conveyed. "We need to find out what these signals look 
like in eastern cultures," she says.

East Asian cultures tend to frown on the display of negative emotions in 
public, Jack says. It's possible that east Asians have learned that by paying 
close attention to another person's eyes, they can spot facial giveaways of 
muzzled feelings of disgust or fear, she says.

Differences in the interpretation of facial expressions between Asians and 
Caucasians are almost certainly cultural, not genetic, Jack says. To see if 
people can switch strategies to suit different cultures, her team is studying 
children born in the UK to Chinese parents.

Journal reference: Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.07.051 (in press)

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17605-human-facial-expressions-arent-universal.html

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