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.

Re:Took a PHD to figure this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe, but anecdotal summaries aren't acceptable as evidence in scientific circles.

Besides, the article is a paper published in Current Biology, not a PhD thesis.

Re:Interesting

[XxtraLarGe]

^_^

The interesting thing is, even though that's not a common emoticon in the west, it is pretty readily identifiable as a "happy" icon. I wonder if easterners also have automatic recognition of :-) ?

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.

Re:Took a PHD to figure this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention it works on a considerably small sample with only 26 participants. Though it didn't mention what the stats were of the experiment itself I can't imagine the study being sound without further survey...

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 [cornell.edu]?

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?"

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 [dtaweb.com] vs. American Spiderman Comic. [flickr.com]

Note how lips, nostrils and ears are generally [dtaweb.com] unarticulated (particularly noses and ears that often are not present at all, or are just hinted) and how much more detailed american [blogspot.com] (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.

Anime Eyes

[NealBScott]

So maybe there really *is* a reason that Japanese Anime is drawn with such large eyes.