Universality Reconsidered: Diversity in Making Meaning of Facial Expressions

Abstract

It has long been claimed that certain facial movements are universally perceived as emotional expressions. The critical tests of this universality thesis were conducted between 1969 and 1975 in small-scale societies in the Pacific using confirmation-based research methods. New studies conducted since 2008 have examined a wider sample of small-scale societies, including on the African and South American continents. They used more discovery-based research methods, providing an important opportunity for reevaluating the universality thesis. These new studies reveal diversity, rather than uniformity, in how perceivers make sense of facial movements, calling the universality thesis into doubt. Instead, they support a perceiver-constructed account of emotion perception that is consistent with the broader literature on perception.

Emotion Perception in Hadza Hunter-Gatherers

“…In Study 2, we employed a choice-from-array method, because it has provided the strongest evidence to date 19 in support of universal perceptions of emotion from the face 10,13 ,for discussion. This method only required that participants match a facial pose to an emotion word or phrase, rather than having to produce verbal labels for emotions.…”

“…p. 12). Following Darwin's lead, modern experiments also restrict participants' options for inferring the psychological meaning of facial configurations by having them match photos of posed facial configurations and a limited number of emotion words (with or without brief stories), a method known as choice-from-array 10,11 . Choice-from-array methods limit the possibility of observing cross-cultural variation that would disconfirm the hypothesis of universal facial expressions, whereas free-labeling methods allow for more discovery of cross-cultural differences [12][13][14] .…”

“…1), none have focused on foraging communities. Those studies only provide mixed evidence in support of the universality hypothesis (i.e., uniformity across societies) vs. cultural diversity (i.e., variation across societies; for review see 10 ). And, notably, until 2008, only three papers (two of them peer reviewed) examined the perception of anger, sadness, fear, disgust, happiness, and surprise in formal experiments with such small-scale societies 8,18,19 .…”

Further considerations regarding PANAS: Contributions from four studies with different Argentinean samples

“…Even more, when considering the growing body of evidence that reveals great variation among human populations in many domains (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010), especially regarding emotion (e.g. Gendron, Crivelli, & Feldman Barrett, 2018). In this sense, to have validated instruments for different populations is fundamental.…”

Postface

“…Pourtant, si la phraséologie connaît un regain d'intérêt dans les travaux de didactique (Cavalla, 2009 ;Baider, 2013 ;Keith et al, 2017), le rôle des métaphores et métonymies dans l'apprentissage et l'enseignement des langues a été moins exploré (Fries et Hay, 2002). Les travailler dans les textes littéraires permet ainsi de saisir la contextualité de l'expression des émotions, et de remettre en question leur universalité proclamée (Gendron, Crivelli et Barrett, 2018). Il en est de même des métonymies qui sont aussi des bases conceptuelles pour comprendre 'l'appréhension et (à) l'expression du rôle du corps physique dans l'expérience émotionnelle' (Brannon ce volume.)…”