Differential judgement of static facial expressions of emotions in three cultures

Judging facial expressions of emotions has important clinical value in the assessment of psychiatric patients. Judging facial emotional expressions in foreign patients however, is not always easy. Controversy has existed in previous reports on cultural differences in identifying static facial expres...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychiatry and clinical neurosciences 2001-10, Vol.55 (5), p.479-483
Main Authors: Huang, Yueqin, Tang, Siu, Helmeste, Daiga, Shioiri, Toshiki, Someya, Toshiyuki
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Biological and medical sciences
China
Cross-Cultural Comparison
cross‐culture difference
Emotions
Facial Expression
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Japan
Judgment
Male
negative emotional expression
Nonverbal Communication
positive emotional expression
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Social attribution, perception and cognition
Social psychology
Students, Health Occupations - psychology
United States
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Summary:Judging facial expressions of emotions has important clinical value in the assessment of psychiatric patients. Judging facial emotional expressions in foreign patients however, is not always easy. Controversy has existed in previous reports on cultural differences in identifying static facial expressions of emotions. While it has been argued that emotional expressions on the face are universally recognized, experimental data obtained were not necessarily totally supportive. Using the data reported in the literature, our previous pilot study showed that the Japanese interpreted many emotional expressions differently from USA viewers of the same emotions. In order to explore such discrepancies further, we conducted the same experiments on Chinese subjects residing in Beijing. The data showed that, similar to the Japanese viewers, Chinese viewers also judged many static facial emotional expressions differently from USA viewers. The combined results of the Chinese and the Japanese experiments suggest a major cross‐cultural difference between American and Asian viewers in identifying some static facial emotional expressions, particularly when the posed emotion has negative connotations. The results have important implications for cross‐cultural communications when facial emotional expressions are presented as static images.
ISSN:1323-1316
1440-1819
DOI:10.1046/j.1440-1819.2001.00893.x