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.

In other news.....

[nomso]

people are indeed different.

Is it that surprising ?

[parallel_prankster]

That is not really a surprising discovery. There are differences in the way people show agreement and disagreement in different areas. In fact there are interesting differences in the way people show how they liked the food in different nations and the same actions can mean entirely opposite things in different countries. I guess the implications of this discovery are interesting for robot developers and AI.

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'. :)

I don't buy it

[Anonymous Coward]

In order to convince me, they'd have to find that East Asians form expressions with just their eyes that other East Asians can pick up more easily than Westerners. It makes no sense that East Asians can't read each other's facial expressions.

This is not news...

[geminidomino]

The exact thing has been written in many of the "manga" technique books or books comparing eastern and western comics I've read.

Duh?

[The Slowest Zombie]

Take a look at Japanese animation (google image search "animne") and compare it to the comics in most American newspapers. Notice any differences? (hint: Anime eyes are huge!) Local artists know what to exploit. To the East it's the eyes. That hasn't caught on so much in America because we look at the whole face and are distracted when features aren't proportionate.

Re:Is it that surprising ?

[hardburn]

It's interesting in that some expressions are universal due to a biological basis, but some are cultural. Previously, some anthropologists assumed they were all cultural, but this has been shown otherwise. See the work of Paul Ekman [wikipedia.org].

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 [wikipedia.org] 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:Tracking and expression aren't the same thing

[readin]

It raises the question of whether the researches were using pictures of people who were genuinely angry, surprised, sad, etc., or pictures of people who were pretending to be those things. It also makes me wonder where were the people from who were pictured in the images.

Happiness or Anger?

[rxan]

It's interesting in that some expressions are universal due to a biological basis, but some are cultural.

Quite true.

Smiling with teeth for humans is a universal expression of happiness. Or at least near universal. But for most other mammals, showing teeth is a sign of aggression and anger.

Re:Tracking and expression aren't the same thing

[morgan_greywolf]

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.

Yes, but it's not just tracking, it's usage of expressions as you allude to. Do not think that because a Japanese man is smiling at you that he is expressing happiness. He could just as easily be expressing anger or sadness. It's similar to the way the Japanese avoid saying "no." "Yes" in Japanese is "hai" (pronounced somewhat like "Hi" in english.) A short "hai" might not indicate agreement, but simply acknowledgement much like we use 'Okay." A medium "hai" will indicate agreement, but a long drawn-out "hai" in a low-tone almost certainly means "no." This is somewhat (but not totally) similar to the American usage of "yeeesssssss, but..." Alternatively, the Japanese may audibly suck air through their teeth. Anyway, smiling is a lot like that.

(Note that I once spent several months working at a predominately Japanese company)

Anyone worked with Indians?

[fiannaFailMan]

They way they shake their heads when saying yes completely fucks with my mind every time!

Re:In other news.....

[gmuslera]

In this case isn't probably about people, but about culture, don't think there is a genetic difference there. And yes, cultures are still indeed different. You need a lot of years of globalization to uniformize that behavior.