Identification of Emotion from Body Movements: A Cross-Cultural Study of Americans and Japanese

Abstract

In the present study American and Japanese subjects' judgments of emotional cues in body movements were compared, when facial information was excluded. Seven fundamental emotions of joy, surprise, fear, sadness, disgust, anger, contempt and three affective-cognitive structures for the emotions of affection, anticipation, and acceptance were displayed by four Japanese actors/actresses with their backs turned toward the viewer. The emotions of sadness, fear, and anger as expressed in kinetic movement showed high agreement between the two cultural groups. Joy and surprise, even though they are classified as fundamental emotions, contained some cultural components that affected the judgments. Furthermore, USA subjects successfully identified disgust as portrayed by Japanese actors/actresses, but Japanese subjects did not identify the expressions of disgust or contempt. Affection, anticipation, and acceptance have some cultural components that are interpreted differently by Japanese and Americans, and this accounted for some of the misunderstandings. Nevertheless, most of the scenes depicting emotions and affective-cognitive structures emotions were correctly identified by the subjects of each culture.

Critical features for the perception of emotion from gait

“…To further validate the obtained results, and in order to relate the features obtained by our new type of analysis to the previous literature on emotional body expressions, Figure 2B also contains a summary of the results from related previous studies (Coulson, 2004;de Meijer, 1989de Meijer, , 1991Montepare, Koff, Zaitchik, & Albert, 1999;Schouwstra & Hoogstraten, 1995;Sogon & Masutani, 1989;Wallbott, 1998). The signs in the figure summarize the results of these studies, '+'-signs indicating cases in which increased emotional expressiveness was associated with increased flexion or greater perceived movement in the corresponding joints, while 'j'-signs indicate reductions in the perceived joint flexion associated with increased expressiveness.…”

Perception of Emotions in the Hand Movement Quality of Finnish Sign Language

“…Thus, we were able to study whether emotional information is encoded in the hand movement quality in such a way that it has signal value independent of previous experience with this particular mode of communication. Based on the previous studies showing that emotions result in changes in the dynamics of body movements, gait, and hand gestures (e.g., Carmichael et al, 1937;de Meijer, 1989;Montepare et al, 1987Montepare et al, , 1999Sogon & Masutani, 1989;Wallbott, 1998) it was expected that emotions would be decoded by the experimental participants in the present study also. The use of sign movements offered a convenient way to focus only on the quality of the hand movements in emotion recognition.…”

“…from dynamic body movements, gait, and manual gestures (e.g., Carmichael, Roberts, & Wessell, 1937;de Meijer, 1989;Montepare, Goldstein, & Clausen, 1987;Montepare, Koff, Zaitchik, & Albert, 1999;Sogon & Masutani, 1989;Wallbott, 1998). In these studies, emotions have been shown to be associated with different characteristic combinations of trunk, head, arm, hand, and leg movements and postures.…”

The influence of Japanese mothers' styles of emotional expression on thirteen‐month‐old infants' reactions to a stranger

“…As reported by Sogon and Masutani (1989), Japanese people have difficulty in idenhfying the emotions of disgust and contempt. This is because the Japanese consider the expression of these emotions inelegant and impolite.…”