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.
鈥淲e question the universality of these specific signals,鈥� says , 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鈥檚 team found.
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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 鈥� reflecting the mistakes the east Asian volunteers made in the experiment.
Go east
Jack鈥檚 results don鈥檛 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. 鈥淲e need to find out what these signals look like in eastern cultures,鈥� she says.
East Asian cultures tend to frown on the display of negative emotions in public, Jack says. It鈥檚 possible that east Asians have learned that by paying close attention to another person鈥檚 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: , DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.07.051 (in press)
