The effects of language on judgments of universal facial expressions of emotion

Abstract

Because of the close connection between culture and language, a number of writers have suggested that bilinguals will differ in their behavior because of differences in the degree of assimilation of different cultures in the same individual. We tested this notion by obtaining data from bilingual (English and Hindi) college students in India using a well-studied cross-cultural research paradigm involving emotional perception. Subjects judged universal facial expressions of emotion in two separate sessions, one conducted entirely in English, the other in Hindi. In each session, they judged which emotion was being portrayed, and how intensely. Subjects recognized anger, fear, and sadness more accurately in English than in Hindi. They also attributed greater intensity to female photos of anger when rating in Hindi, but attributed greater intensity to female photos of sadness when rating in English. These findings were discussed in relation to the theoretical connection between culture and language.

Priming Effects of Language On Emotion Judgments in Spanish—English Bilinguals

“…They replicate previous findings demonstrating the greater accessibility of emotion labels in English (Matsumoto & Assar, 1992) and provide a platform to interpret cross-cultural differences in emotion recognition accuracy levels (Matsumoto, 1989;Russell, 1991) by using an unpacking mediator variable (Matsumoto & Yoo, 2006). The findings also demonstrate the greater accessibility of emotion-related processes in the self in one's native language, which has implications for social cognition.…”

Evidence and a computational explanation of cultural differences in facial expression recognition.

“…First, in most of the analyzed studies that included minority ethnic groups within a nation, members of the minority groups tended to have an out-group advantage when observing emotions in majority group members (minorities were more accurate when judging emotions posed by the majority group than vice versa). Also, in a few of the analyzed studies (Biehl et al, 1997;Matsumoto & Assar, 1992;Matsumoto & Ekman, 1988), members of imitated cultures tended to have an out-group advantage when the imitators were from different cultures. For example, Americans tended to be more accurate than Japanese when judging the Japanese posers in the Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion (JACFEE) data set (Matsumoto & Ekman, 1988), in which both Japanese and Caucasian posers precisely imitate the same prototypical expressions posed according to Facial Action Coding System (FACS) standards defined by Americans.…”

Cultural dialects of real and synthetic emotional facial expressions

“…Finally, the English language of the experiment may have led to a bias towards the judgment of American facial expressions. The latter effect was shown for Indian participants when evaluating facial expressions in English and in Hindi (Matsumoto and Assar 1992).…”

“…It has been argued that English has the biggest emotional vocabulary, and that this richness of the language may be the cause of the superior capability of Americans in understanding emotions also form facial displays (Matsumoto and Assar 1992).…”