Separated by a common language: Nonverbal accents and cultural stereotypes about Americans and Australians

Marsh, Abigail A.; Elfenbein, Hillary Anger; Ambady, Nalini

doi:10.1037/e633982013-219

Cited by 13 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Such cultural specificities -called 'accents' or 'dialects' (Elfenbein, 2013;Elfenbein, Beaupre, Levesque, & Hess, 2007;Marsh, Elfenbein, & Ambady, 2003;Silvan S. Tomkins & Robert McCarter, 1964), or 'modifiers' in animal communication (Jenssen, 1977(Jenssen, , 1979 -are widely discussed in the literature (Ekman, 1972;Elfenbein, 2013;Matsumoto, Yoo, & Fontaine, 2008;Mesquita & Frijda, 1992). For example, Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans are reliably distinguished on the basis of expressive but not neutral facial expressions (Marsh et al, 2003), suggesting the embedding of cultural accents (see also Marsh, Elfenbein, & Ambady, 2007). Yet, segregating culturally common AU patterns (i.e., basis AUs) from those that are culture specific (i.e., modifier AUs) has remained challenging as detailed above (Labarre, 1947).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Four not six: Revealing culturally common facial expressions of emotion.

Jack

Sun

Delis

et al. 2016

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

178

123

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As a highly social species, humans generate complex facial expressions to communicate a diverse range of emotions. Since Darwin’s work, identifying among these complex patterns which are common across cultures and which are culture-specific has remained a central question in psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and more recently machine vision and social robotics. Classic approaches to addressing this question typically tested the cross-cultural recognition of theoretically motivated facial expressions representing 6 emotions, and reported universality. Yet, variable recognition accuracy across cultures suggests a narrower cross-cultural communication supported by sets of simpler expressive patterns embedded in more complex facial expressions. We explore this hypothesis by modeling the facial expressions of over 60 emotions across 2 cultures, and segregating out the latent expressive patterns. Using a multidisciplinary approach, we first map the conceptual organization of a broad spectrum of emotion words by building semantic networks in 2 cultures. For each emotion word in each culture, we then model and validate its corresponding dynamic facial expression, producing over 60 culturally valid facial expression models. We then apply to the pooled models a multivariate data reduction technique, revealing 4 latent and culturally common facial expression patterns that each communicates specific combinations of valence, arousal, and dominance. We then reveal the face movements that accentuate each latent expressive pattern to create complex facial expressions. Our data questions the widely held view that 6 facial expression patterns are universal, instead suggesting 4 latent expressive patterns with direct implications for emotion communication, social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and social robotics.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Four not six: Revealing culturally common facial expressions of emotion.

Jack

Sun

Delis

et al. 2016

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

178

123

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The facial expressions of the GEMEP actors may also signal a different geographical region due to the presence of nonverbal accents [ 73 ]. These accents can be subtle enough to distinguish cultures that share a common language, such as Australia and the United States [ 74 ]. Finally, the GEMEP stimuli have been validated by individuals of the same cultural region as the GEMEP actors.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ryerson Audio-Visual Database of Emotional Speech and Song (RAVDESS): A dynamic, multimodal set of facial and vocal expressions in North American English

2018

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The RAVDESS is a validated multimodal database of emotional speech and song. The database is gender balanced consisting of 24 professional actors, vocalizing lexically-matched statements in a neutral North American accent. Speech includes calm, happy, sad, angry, fearful, surprise, and disgust expressions, and song contains calm, happy, sad, angry, and fearful emotions. Each expression is produced at two levels of emotional intensity, with an additional neutral expression. All conditions are available in face-and-voice, face-only, and voice-only formats. The set of 7356 recordings were each rated 10 times on emotional validity, intensity, and genuineness. Ratings were provided by 247 individuals who were characteristic of untrained research participants from North America. A further set of 72 participants provided test-retest data. High levels of emotional validity and test-retest intrarater reliability were reported. Corrected accuracy and composite "goodness" measures are presented to assist researchers in the selection of stimuli. All recordings are made freely available under a Creative Commons license and can be downloaded at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1188976.

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“…Non-conventional gestures, on the contrary, may be more easily understood across cultures. Pointing when giving directions, reaching up to show how tall someone is, gesturing towards an empty seat, are all examples of communicative gestures that can serve as a ‘quasi-universal’ language ( Marsh et al, 2007 ). Comparison of results obtained in different linguistic contexts and cultures, however, have so far been hindered by lack of evaluation instruments adapted and validated in different languages.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Multilingual CID-5: A New Tool to Study the Perception of Communicative Interactions in Different Languages

et al. 2015

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The investigation of the ability to perceive, recognize, and judge upon social intentions, such as communicative intentions, on the basis of body motion is a growing research area. Cross-cultural differences in ability to perceive and interpret biological motion, however, have been poorly investigated so far. Progress in this domain strongly depends on the availability of suitable stimulus material. In the present method paper, we describe the multilingual CID-5, an extension of the CID-5 database, allowing for the investigation of how non-conventional communicative gestures are classified and identified by speakers of different languages. The CID-5 database contains 14 communicative interactions and 7 non-communicative actions performed by couples of agents and presented as point-light displays. For each action, the database provides movie files with the point-light animation, text files with the 3-D spatial coordinates of the point-lights, and five different response alternatives. In the multilingual CID-5 the alternatives were translated into seven languages (Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, and Polish). Preliminary data collected to assess the recognizability of the actions in the different languages suggest that, for most of the action stimuli, information presented in point-light displays is sufficient for the distinctive classification of the action as communicative vs. individual, as well as for identification of the specific communicative gesture performed by the actor in all the available languages.

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Separated by a common language: Nonverbal accents and cultural stereotypes about Americans and Australians

Cited by 13 publications

References 14 publications

Four not six: Revealing culturally common facial expressions of emotion.

Four not six: Revealing culturally common facial expressions of emotion.

The Ryerson Audio-Visual Database of Emotional Speech and Song (RAVDESS): A dynamic, multimodal set of facial and vocal expressions in North American English

The Multilingual CID-5: A New Tool to Study the Perception of Communicative Interactions in Different Languages

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