Cultural difference in recognition of facial emotional expression: Contrast between Japanese and American raters

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONRecently, the study of faces has become popular. These studies range from the investigation of beauty and attraction, 1 to the psychiatrically relevant topics of percentage changes of emotional expressions in depression and schizophrenia. 2 Cross-cultural issues have been addressed extensively, 3-6 while high technological approaches include the identification of brain structures responsible for registering fear or aggression. 7,8 In order to identify the most suitable paradigm for investigating psychopathology and perceptual changes in Japanese psychiatric subjects, we tested the Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion (JACFEE) in a sample of young Japanese subjects. 6 The JACFEE photo set 9 was developed by American workers and has been used by many investigators in the field of facial research. Some crosscultural results have been reported 3,4 and these analyses indicated a significant rater culture and emotion factor interaction. Our data showed even more dramatic ethnic differences, 6 which encouraged us to further examine the still photo paradigm for testing emotional expressions. It also alerted us to the fact that much work is needed before one embarks upon studying the emotionally compromised psychiatric patient.We were interested by the degree of incorrectness in the identification of facial emotional expressions by our Japanese raters under the Matsumoto-Ekman still photo paradigm. Our previous data show that out of the seven emotions posed, the Japanese raters did very poorly (45-56% correct) in recognizing anger, contempt, and fear. They did poorly in recognizing disgust and sadness (64-67% correct), and only scored well for recognition of surprise and happiness (89-95% correct). This poor performance of Japanese normal control raters prompted us to further examine their Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences (1999) AbstractUsing the Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion (JACFEE) photo set, the relationship between recognition and intensity ratings of universal facial expressions of emotions in 123 Japanese undergraduate students was examined and compared with data reported by American raters. In Japanese raters, although the intensity was rated as high for some of the poses, their correctness scores were poor, suggesting a serious misjudgment of the intended emotions as defined in the JACFEE photo set. Only in Japanese raters were significant relationships between the intensity scores and the percentage correctness scores for sadness detected (r = 0.97, P < 0.0001), but no significant relationship was observed for other emotions. The robust correlation suggests the possibility that Japanese raters might be more responsive to certain emotional expressions when they are fully or intensely expressed. It is proposed that the facial emotional expression paradigm cannot be applied to the psychiatric setting without first refining for cultural differences.

Patient demographic characteristics and facial expressions influence nurses’ assessment of mood in the context of pain: A Virtual Human and lens model investigation

“…These findings are difficult to interpret given a lack of relevant literature. Although cross-cultural emotional recognition has been investigated (Ekman and Friesen, 1971; Schimmack, 1996; Shioiri et al, 1999), with results generally indicating greater accuracy among persons of similar racial and/or ethnic background (Elfenbein and Ambady, 2002), this body of research does not speak directly to the current study for two reasons. First, previous studies have emphasized the race/ethnicity of the observer, whereas we focused exclusively on the observed person (VH patient); the sample was insufficiently diverse to examine nurse-by-patient race interaction effects.…”

“…Cross-cultural recognition of emotional expressions has also received empirical attention (Ekman and Friesen, 1971; Schimmack, 1996; Shioiri et al, 1999). A meta-analysis indicated that individuals are more accurate in identifying the expressions of persons who share their racial/ethnic background (Elfenbein and Ambady, 2002).…”

Emotion perception across cultures: the role of cognitive mechanisms

“…While results from early cross-cultural investigations of emotion perception support the presence of some level of cultural universality in emotion perception and production (Ekman et al, 1969; Ekman and Friesen, 1971; Izard, 1971), more recent results reveal cross-cultural differences in cognition and behavior (for review see Nisbett and Masuda, 2003), including the domain of emotion perception (e.g., Ekman et al, 1987; Matsumoto and Ekman, 1989; Biehl et al, 1997; Yrizarry et al, 1998; Nisbett et al, 2001; Matsumoto et al, 2002; Jack et al, 2012b). Prior experiments employing full-face and high-intensity expressions, have identified a gradient of cultural agreement that is greatest for positive emotions, such as happiness, and lowest for negative emotions, such as fear and anger (Ekman et al, 1987; Matsumoto, 1990).…”

Culture but not gender modulates amygdala activation during explicit emotion recognition

“…However, according to findings on cultural differences in emotion processing behavior: e.g. [33-35]; neural correlates: e.g., [16,18], we posited a significant impact of ethnic group on behavioral and neural responses that affects the amygdala: we hypothesized stronger amygdala activation in the female Asian sample as they were out-group to the ethnic group of posers presented (i.e., Caucasians). Considering previous results on the significant effect of duration of stay on emotion recognition performance [36] and amygdala activation in male immigrants [18], we also expected a significant association between duration of stay and behavioral performance and amygdala activation in Asian females.…”