Everyone has emotions – regardless of your age, gender, or cultural background. Facial expressions form a kind of language that we can use to share our emotions with others, but is this language the same across the world? In other words, does an angry face communicate the same information in Japan as it does in the Netherlands?
In his book “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,” biologist Charles Darwin proposed that certain emotions are universal. According to his theory, people around the world experience these emotions and express them in a similar way [1]. For example, a smile should mean the same thing for people in Japan as it does in the Netherlands. Since Darwin’s time, scientists have been wondering whether this is really the case. This question appears simple, but it has led to much controversy – and after more than 50 years of research, there are still many uncertainties.
Basic Emotions
Nevertheless, some researchers have made a few attempts. In the 1960s, psychologist Paul Ekman and his colleagues went to the most remote places on earth to conduct emotion recognition tasks. In one study, he showed a hunter-gatherer tribe, the Fore people from Papua New Guinea, various images of facial expressions of people from the United States. These were facial expressions of what we now call “basic emotions” – happiness, fear, sadness, disgust, anger, and surprise. The Fore, although they had hardly any contact with people outside their own tribe at that time, could still recognize the emotions well above chance [2]. Based on this, Ekman and his colleagues concluded that these basic emotions are universal.
Cultural Differences
But – if we look at Ekman’s findings, we also see clear cultural differences. For example, members of the Fore tribe were more likely to disagree on the correct emotion term than Americans. So perhaps there are also subtle differences in how people around the world express and perceive emotions? It may mean that people are better able to recognize emotions within their own culture than in another culture. According to a meta-analysis, a type of study that combines the results of previous research, this appears to be the case. People make fewer mistakes in recognizing emotions in people from their own culture compared to other cultures [3].
Perhaps there is room for both universality and cultural differences? It may be that the basis of certain facial expressions is similar worldwide, but, like language, there may be cultural “accents.” In one study, people from China, India, Korea, Japan, and the United States were asked to express different emotions based on stories (for example: “pretend you just accidentally drank spoiled milk”). For 19 of the 22 different emotions, besides similarities, clear cultural accents were noticeable. For example, while people from Japan and the US often puffed out their chest in the emotion of pride, people from China, India, and Korea did not [4]. Overall, despite a possible universal basis of facial expressions, research like this shows that cultural “accents” play a role.
Real Emotions
For my own research, I will soon be going to Japan to gain new insights into this topic. Almost all of the aforementioned studies have used photos and videos with acted emotions. These are often very intense and sometimes seem very unnatural, unlike the emotions we encounter in our daily lives. In our research, we want to look at ‘real’ emotions and how they are perceived by children and adults in both Japan and the Netherlands. Hopefully, this way we will gain more insight into how culture influences our perception of emotions. So, keep an eye on my blogs for an update!
References
[1] Ekman, P. (2009). Darwin’s contributions to our understanding of emotional expressions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1535), 3449-3451.
[2] Ekman, P., Sorenson, E. R., & Friesen, W. V. (1969). Pan-cultural elements in facial displays of emotion. Science, 164(3875), 86-88.
[3] Elfenbein, H. A., & Ambady, N. (2002). On the universality and cultural specificity of emotion recognition: a meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 128(2), 203.
[4] Cordaro, D. T., Sun, R., Keltner, D., Kamble, S., Huddar, N., & McNeil, G. (2018). Universals and cultural variations in 22 emotional expressions across five cultures. Emotion, 18(1), 75.
**Note: This blog was translated by the author from a post originally designated for Faces of Science: https://www.nemokennislink.nl/publicaties/wat-je-wereldwijd-niet-zegt-met-emoties/
