Internal representations reveal cultural diversity in expectations of facial expressions of emotion.

Abstract

Facial expressions have long been considered the "universal language of emotion." Yet consistent cultural differences in the recognition of facial expressions contradict such notions (e.g., R. E. Jack, C. Blais, C. Scheepers, P. G. Schyns, & R. Caldara, 2009). Rather, culture-as an intricate system of social concepts and beliefs-could generate different expectations (i.e., internal representations) of facial expression signals. To investigate, they used a powerful psychophysical technique (reverse correlation) to estimate the observer-specific internal representations of the 6 basic facial expressions of emotion (i.e., happy, surprise, fear, disgust, anger, and sad) in two culturally distinct groups (i.e., Western Caucasian [WC] and East Asian [EA]). Using complementary statistical image analyses, cultural specificity was directly revealed in these representations. Specifically, whereas WC internal representations predominantly featured the eyebrows and mouth, EA internal representations showed a preference for expressive information in the eye region. Closer inspection of the EA observer preference revealed a surprising feature: changes of gaze direction, shown primarily among the EA group. For the first time, it is revealed directly that culture can finely shape the internal representations of common facial expressions of emotion, challenging notions of a biologically hardwired "universal language of emotion."

Uncovering mental representations of smiled speech using reverse correlation

“…It would have been difficult to measure perceptual filters for smiling with phonemes close to the boundaries of the space, i.e., that cannot easily be produced with a smiling/unsmiling face (e.g., an [i], produced with the jaw in close to smile position or a [u], produced with rounded lips antithetical to smiling). Similar considerations have been made in visual reversecorrelation studies requiring morphed unexpressive/androgyny faces (e.g., Jack et al, 2012b). …”

Visualising mental representations: A primer on noise-based reverse correlation in social psychology

“…Using this approach, Jack, Caldara, and Schyns (2012) visualised mental representations of emotions in Western Caucasian and East Asian participants (Jack et al, 2012). The CIs showed clear differences between the two groups.…”

Toward a Social Psychophysics of Face Communication

“…Figure 2a also shows the results from individuals of different cultures (i.e., Western, East Asian). Specifically, Westerners required information to be added to both the eye and mouth regions to perceive emotions, whereas East Asians required much more information to be added to the eyes, for example by changing gaze direction (see Jack et al 2011). A similar approach using structured (Gabor) noise (Figure 2b) is used to generate local multiscale random contours on an age-neutral face to estimate, in older and younger adults, the mental representations that underlie their judgments of the chronological age of a face .…”

“…In social psychology, this approach has been used successfully to reveal cultural differences in the mental representations of facial expressions of emotion ( Jack et al 2011), aggression in the mental representations of faces of ethnic out-group members amongst prejudiced individuals (Dotsch et al 2008), the unattractiveness of newly learned female faces in happily partnered males (Karremans et al 2011), and the homogenization of older adult faces in the mental representations of younger adults . In visual cognition, this approach has also been used fruitfully Adding noise to a face.…”