The effects of culture and context on perceptions of robotic facial expressions

Abstract

We report two experimental studies of human perceptions of robotic facial expressions while systematically varying context effects and the cultural background of subjects (n = 93). Except for Fear, East Asian and Western subjects were not significantly different in recognition rates, and, while Westerners were better at judging affect from mouth movement alone, East Asians were not any better at judging affect based on eye/brow movement alone. Moreover, context effects appeared capable of over-riding such cultural differences, most notably for Fear. The results seem to run counter to previous theories of cultural differences in facial expression based on emoticons and eye fixation patterns. We connect this to broader research in cognitive science – suggesting the findings support a dynamical systems view of social cognition as an emergent phenomenon. The results here suggest that, if we can induce appropriate context effects, it may be possible to createculture-neutral modelsof robots and affective interaction.

Context congruency and robotic facial expressions: Do effects on human perceptions vary across culture?

“…This trend varied by the valence of the expression [33]. Recent work has shown the importance of context in perceptions of robotic facial expressions across cultures as well [11,37].…”

“…However, more recent studies have provided evidence countering the use of such visual fixation patterns, noting that people are engaged in a range of information-gathering activities for a variety of purposes (not simply judging affect) when looking at other faces [26][27][28]. Recent work in human-robot interaction has provided empirical evidence that also runs counter to this hypothesis [11]. In short, the empirical basis at this point for the Emoticon hypothesis is tenuous at best.…”

“…As in interaction among humans, context effects can play a role in how people perceive such cues performed by a robot. In previous work studying robotic facial expressions in HRI, we have empirically shown that context effects of similar size were present regardless of the participant's cultural background [11]. Providing context known to elicit matching emotions significantly improved human recognition of the robotic facial expressions over noncontext experiments, even though the facial expressions were exactly the same in both conditions.…”

“…We have provided a more extensive overview of the scientific literature on robotic facial expressions and human emotion in previous papers [11,15,16].…”

“…The results suggested a form of projection. Emotions perceived in the faces of others -including robots -appeared to be an internal construct in the mind of the perceiver, based on a number of perceptual and cognitive processes [11,12]. This was equally true across human subjects from Western and Asian cultural backgrounds.…”