Moral expressions in Hong Kong, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom: Cultural similarities and differences in how affective facial muscle activity predicts judgments.

Abstract

How does facial muscle activity relate to moral judgments across cultures? To explore this question, we used facial electromyography (EMG) among residents of New Zealand (N ϭ 30) and Hong Kong (N ϭ 40), comparing findings to prior data from the United Kingdom. We recorded EMG involved in expressions of disgust (m.levator labii), anger (m.corrugator supercilii), amusement (m.zygomaticus major), and surprise (m.medial frontalis) while participants thought about 90 scenarios that varied in valence and relevance to the harm, fairness, ingroup, authority, and purity moral dimensions. Overall, levator and corrugator activity were associated with more negative judgments in all samples, while only in Hong Kong a decrease in medial frontalis activity was associated with negativity. Both levator and corrugator were cross-culturally associated with negative judgments in purity scenarios. In contrast to prior findings, harm and fairness violations were associated with different levator and/or corrugator activity across samples. We discuss implications for the relationship between spontaneous facial muscle activity and moral versus negativity judgments across cultures.

Toddlers’ Affective Responses to Sociomoral Scenes Insights From Physiological Measures

“…For instance, statements describing third-party harm violations ("Someone pinched a baby's nose until it cried") evoked greater corrugator activity in adults than did non-violations ("Someone showed compassion to those in need"). Further, within individuals, greater corrugator responses were associated with more negative judgments of the violations (Buchtel et al, 2022;Cannon et al, 2011). These findings suggest that EMG activity over corrugator supercilii is sensitive to prosocial/antisocial interactions in adults, and that its magnitude is meaningfully related to variation in sociomoral judgments.…”

“…The fact that differential corrugator responses were found in the During-phase, but not in other phases of the helping/hindering scenarios, suggests that these responses were elicited by helping and hindering actions per se, as opposed to the positive and negative outcomes of these actions. Indeed, adult research has found that greater corrugator responses to moral transgressions predict more negative judgments of the behaviors (Buchtel et al, 2022;Cannon et al, 2011). Although corrugator activity has also been linked to non-emotional processes such as concentration and attention (Cohen et al, 1992), the close mapping between infants' corrugator responses and the valence of the actions (i.e., higher corrugator activity when infants observed a negative social event), and the precise timing of these corrugator responses (i.e., condition differences were found during helping/hindering actions, but not during other phases of the scenarios) support the emotional valence interpretation.…”

Can Perceivers Differentiate Intense Facial Expressions? Eye Movement Patterns

“…Research has also explored the associations between action units (AUs) and the valence of facial expressions and revealed that two facial action units, namely, brow lowering (AU4) and smiling (AU12), might be direct indices of valence. Positive facial expressions are associated with more zygomatic facial muscle activity than negative facial expressions, and negative facial expressions (such as sad and angry expressions) are associated with higher corrugator muscle activity [ 17 , 18 , 19 ]. A smiling mouth (AU12) has been found to enhance perceived pleasantness and contribute more to happiness than positive eyes [ 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ].…”