Is the angry face the same for a person of Eastern origin as one of Western origin? According to one of the most accepted hypotheses in biology and social sciences, it should be. However, it seems that the manifestation and intensity of the six basic emotions (joy, surprise, disgust, anger, fear and sadness) would not be as universal as had been believed until now. Results from a study conducted in the United Kingdom show that they could be perceived differently depending on a person’s culture.
The study has concluded that the expression of emotions may not be an innate issue, but rather a cultural one. In other words, opening your eyes and mouth wide on the other side of the world may not be of much use if the inhabitants of that place do not know how to identify the facial expression of surprise. These conclusions contradict the most accepted hypothesis in biology and social sciences since Darwin wrote ‘The expression of emotions in man and animals’ in 1872. In it, he established that the facial expressions of the six basic emotions (joy, surprise, disgust, anger, fear and sadness) are universal and innate.
The Easterners confused the surprise above all.
In it, published in the magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the Institute of Neurosciences and Psychology at the University of Glasgow (United Kingdom) point out that the communication of emotions has evolved and improved, in the context of social interaction. In the work they had Western and Eastern participants. The former distinguished the six basic emotions, while the Easterners overlapped some of them.
The Easterners mainly confused surprise, fear, disgust and anger. The explanation could be that they tend to focus on the eyes to recognize the degree of joy, fear, disgust and anger in a person. Westerners, on the other hand, deduce the magnitude of the emotion from other facial muscles, especially those related to the expression of the mouth.
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The same scientists reached this conclusion a few years ago, in a work that at that time in the magazine Current Biology. As a result, Japanese people may fall into more misunderstandings, since they usually face a minimally ambiguous face. To verify their hypothesis, in the recent study, the researchers considered a contemporary element: emoticons, a sequence of characters that, in principle, represent a human face and are used to express emotions in email, forums, SMS and in the chats.
Some expressions are universal.
The authors recalled that this cultural difference in the way faces are interpreted between Westerners and Asians is also seen in emoticons: Asians offer much more marked features in the upper part of the face, especially in the eyes, while Westerners They emphasize the lower part, especially the mouth.
Eyes and mouth, center of emotions
Emotions: cultural or innate?
The field of emotions is not an exact science. Since Darwin, the study of universal expressions has concerned the scientific community, among them Paul Ekman, pioneer psychologist in the study of emotions and their relationship with facial expression, and Ray Birdwhistell, founder anthropologist of kinesics or interpretation of body movements. Ekman believes that there are indeed universal gestures: people around the world laugh when they are happy or want to appear so, and they frown when they are angry or pretend to be so. The role of culture is to disguise them, exaggerate them, hide them or suppress them completely. Birdwhistell, on the other hand, maintains that although some anatomical expressions are similar in all people, the meaning differs depending on the culture to which they belong.
Like Ekman, most scientists consider that, at least, some expressions are universal. The evidence most cited by those who support this statement is the study carried out on children blind from birth. It has been proven that all newborns express some kind of smile from five weeks of age, even if they are blind. Children blind from birth also laugh, cry, frown, and adopt typical expressions of anger, fear, or sadness.
Universal Emotions and Facial Expressions
Paul Ekman defined six universal gestures, although years later he expanded them to 17. These were the first:
Happiness: It is produced by the contraction of the muscle that goes from the cheekbone to the upper lip and the orbicularis that surrounds the eye. The cheeks rise.
Sadness: It manifests itself when the upper eyelids droop and the eyebrows angle upward. The eyebrow wrinkles and the lips stretch horizontally.
Gonna: fixed gaze, eyebrows drawn together and down, and tendency to clench teeth.
Surprise: the upper eyelids rise, but the lower ones are not tense. The jaw usually drops.
Disgust: slight contraction of the muscle that wrinkles the nose and narrows the eyes. The gesture of the wrinkled nose is simultaneous with the raising of the upper lip.
Fear: follow the surprise. Upper eyelids raised to the maximum and lower eyelids tense. Raised eyebrows approach. The lips are extended backwards.
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Clotilde Sarrió is a therapist specialized in Gestalt Therapy, you can continue reading her articles on her famous blog