BBC: Fascinating study on how different cultures 'read' facial expressions.

[Poll_Blind]

Facial expressions 'not global' (snippeted together for clarity):

A new study suggests that people from different cultures read facial expressions differently. East Asian participants in the study focused mostly on the eyes, but those from the West scanned the whole face. The work published in Current Biology journal challenges the idea facial expressions are universally understood.

The researchers say the confusion arises because 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.

The team showed 13 Western Caucasians and 13 East Asians a set of standardized images depicting the seven main facial expressions: happy, sad, neutral, angry, disgusted, fearful and surprised. They used eye movement trackers to monitor where the participants were looking when interpreting the expressions.

A computer program given the same information from the eyes as the East Asian observers was similarly unable to distinguish between the emotions of disgust and anger, and fear and surprise.

  Lots of fascinating implications of this including, off the top of my head, the generally much-larger eyes of Asian cartoon characters as opposed to Western cartoon characters. Maybe something, maybe nothing. But I thought it was very interesting none-the-less.

PB

[JonQ]

1. That is interesting

concerned about the small sample size though.

But it does seem to me in my very unscientific study that asians tend to use fewer facial expressions as well, which would fit if those have a lower value in their opinion.

[Poll_Blind]

2. Agreed- though the eye-tracking adds a lot more empirical weight, IMO.

I'm not sure where you came across with the "asians tend to use fewer facial expressions" (I'm not challenging it, just not familiar with it) factoid, but could it be that Westerners are analyzing Asian faces, using the "overall" method, when in reality much more is communicated solely through the eyes?

In other words, are there more subtle forms of expression, via the eyes in the Asian subjects that your factoid was derived from, which are lost on Western experimentors?

PB

[JonQ]

3. I meant

in my experience they seem to smile, frown, whatever using their facial muscles less than westerners, particularly the japanese. Which would fit, if they are focusing more on eye expressions, then other forms of expression would be reduced.

Could just be me though, so that's why I added the "very unscientific" bit.

[Orsino]

4. Surprising.

But two groups of 13 is not a large sample. Wonder if these results are reproducible?