Listen to this PodcastMore 60-Second Science
[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
Westerners traveling to Asia may expect some language barriers. Perhaps enthusiastic facial expressions will help them be understood. Well, not so fast. According to research published August 13th in the journal Current Biology, Easterners and Westerners might not speak the same facial language.
University of Glasgow researchers enlisted 13 Western Caucasians and 13 East Asians. They had everyone examine pictures of expressive faces that were labeled according to a recognized western system called the Facial Action Coding System. The faces were purported to be happy, sad, surprised, fearful, disgusted, angry or neutral, and the participants categorized them as such. Turns out the East Asians were less likely to categorize the faces by Western standards.
By tracking the subject’s eye movements, researchers concluded that Westerners look at whole faces. But Easterners kept their focus mainly on the eye region. So while Westerners may use their whole faces to show that they’re elated, Easterners may express that feeling mainly around their eyes. Which means that facial expressions are not a universal language. That’s a fact that international travelers are sooner or later forced to face.
—Cynthia Graber
See what we're tweeting about
16 Comments
Add Commenta universal language? I think it should be " an universal language".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnly if you pronounce it "ooniversal". I am not aware of any common dialects that do that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConsidering the popularity of the show "Lie to me", I would have figured many more germane comments. Paul Ekman's ground breaking work in this area covering 20 years and uncountable cultures seems to fly in the face of this study. Although his work is the basis for the Facial Action Coding System, maybe he looked at the expressions only through Westerner's eyes. Considering he found commonality of the above expressions in remote tribes in primitive cultures, it is a puzzling conclusion. check out http://www.face-and-emotion.com/dataface/facs/description.jsp
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisno its "a"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi know universal starts with a vowel,
but in englsh universal breaks the rule of "an" before a word with a vowel
Incorrect. It's "a universal" just like it's "a historic."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSource: http://www.edufind.com/english/grammar/Determiners3.cfm
It's "a universal" like "a unit" and "a university."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.edufind.com/english/grammar/Determiners3.cfm
It was an interesting article also...
If anyone other than the grammar police is interested in the actual content of the article, please note the small sample that was used to reach this controversial conclusion. 26 people, including 13 "Westerners" and 13 "East Asians"?!! What does THAT mean? Is this good science? I think not. Further study is demanded before arriving at the conclusion described in the article. I suggest a reading of the primary source for more details. it is unfortunate when "pop" science misinterprets and misrepresents something as scienctific study when it lacks the necessary rigor to meet that definition.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think Ekman had it right. The expressions are essentially "wired" as to what they convey, but the way in which different cultures read their meaning has a lot to do with how that particular culture has learned to react to the emotional messages. We have in this example one culture reacting in a more direct fashion while the other tends to react in a more indirect fashion, an inferential response mechanism if you will.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNub
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYoure right. The sample size is to small to be representative. Not much of the study technique is further known. For instance if the facial expressions were "acted" and not based on real emotional experiance, the easterners would have been more able to recognise poor acting and in fact the study had nothing to do with body language. At the end of the day it is all conjecture is it not.
Regards
(PS. G Police - Enjoy cos i dont care.)
This report makes for great headlines, but it's bad science. A miniscule sample size of test subjects, using cartoonishly exaggerated facial expressions by actors, rather than photos of people actually feeling these emotions. The only thing it tells us is how well we read the visual language shorthand of our own culture's caricatures. Western cartoon expressions utilize the entire face with an emphasis upon the mouth to form largely artificial mouth shapes to mean various emotions. Anyone who's watched Japanese anime lately can tell you the eyes are where they tend to create a set of largely artificial series of symbols to mean various emotions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyes, reading pictures and looking at real people while talking to them are different. when i observe a picture of a person,i like to scan the whole face, while talking to people, i usually pay attention to their eyes and teeth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe site of BBC NEWS/science & Environment- has an interesting article entitled "Facial expressions 'not global'" dated of 14 August 2009. Page - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8199951.stm .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat appears is that the perception of the facial expression and not the expression itself is the issue.
People from East Asian are at a disadvantage in relation to Westerners. This conclusion according to that scientists.
But I think that more research is needed.
Seven years ago, I moved from The Netherlands, where I was born and had been living for 60 years, to Italy. I can assure you that the Italians' body language, including facial expressions, differs vastly from what I had seen in Holland. Therefore I'm not surprised that the interpretation of facial expressions among western and oriental people also differs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe eyes have it...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthis reminds me of "lie to me"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi am really interested in psychology though.
know what people might feel accroding to their behavior! so cool.
but , is that called "behaviorism"?
This made it to scientific american?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI cannot say that the experiment is not well done, but the article portrays a huge non-sequitour.
So just because eateners pay more attention to the eyes* that means that their expresions are different? The fact that two observers perceive the same object in a diferent manner points towards a difference in the act of observation, not a difference in the object.
*which could be simply explained by saying that they look at the ayes because that is the way they recognize each other, which would in turn explain why westeners have a hard time diferentiating between eastern faces.