Reading emotions from faces in two indigenous societies.

Crivelli, Carlos; Jarillo, Sergio; Russell, James A.; Fernández‐Dols, José‐Miguel

doi:10.1037/xge0000172

Cited by 84 publications

(80 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…Thus, the association of the gasping face with fear and disgust was limited to emotion labels and therefore may have more to do with the breadth of Kilivila emotion labels rather than the meaning ascribed to the gasping face. This finding converges with results obtained using another recognition task (i.e., matching a facial expression from an array of faces to an emotion label in a between-subjects design) in other areas and islands of the Trobriand archipelago (37).…”

Section: Study 2: Threat Displays In the Trobriand Islands And A Westernsupporting

confidence: 79%

The fear gasping face as a threat display in a Melanesian society

Crivelli

Russell

Jarillo

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Theory and research show that humans attribute both emotions and intentions to others on the basis of facial behavior: A gasping face can be seen as showing "fear" and intent to submit. The assumption that such interpretations are pancultural derives largely from Western societies. Here, we report two studies conducted in an indigenous, small-scale Melanesian society with considerable cultural and visual isolation from the West: the Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea. Our multidisciplinary research team spoke the vernacular and had extensive prior fieldwork experience. In study 1, Trobriand adolescents were asked to attribute emotions, social motives, or both to a set of facial displays. Trobrianders showed a mixed and variable attribution pattern, although with much lower agreement than studies of Western samples. Remarkably, the gasping face (traditionally considered a display of fear and submission in the West) was consistently matched to two unpredicted categories: anger and threat. In study 2, adolescents were asked to select the face that was threatening; Trobrianders chose the "fear" gasping face whereas Spaniards chose an "angry" scowling face. Our findings, consistent with functional approaches to animal communication and observations made on threat displays in small-scale societies, challenge the Western assumption that "fear" gasping faces uniformly express fear or signal submission across cultures.behavioral ecology | facial behavior | indigenous societies | emotion | diversity

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Section: Study 2: Threat Displays In the Trobriand Islands And A Westernsupporting

confidence: 79%

The fear gasping face as a threat display in a Melanesian society

Crivelli

Russell

Jarillo

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…But this does not avoid the problem of the mental state fallacy. Furthermore, it makes no sense to elevate categories for anger, sadness, fear, disgust and happiness to a common ethological framework for comparing humans with other animals, when there is ample evidence from linguistics, anthropology and psychology that these categories do not offer a robust, universal framework for comparing humans of different cultures (Russell, 1991; Gendron et al , 2014a,b, 2015; Wierzbicka, 2014; Crivelli et al , 2016). …”

Section: Selected Implications Of the Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

The theory of constructed emotion: an active inference account of interoception and categorization

Barrett

2016

Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci

838

1,167

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The science of emotion has been using folk psychology categories derived from philosophy to search for the brain basis of emotion. The last two decades of neuroscience research have brought us to the brink of a paradigm shift in understanding the workings of the brain, however, setting the stage to revolutionize our understanding of what emotions are and how they work. In this article, we begin with the structure and function of the brain, and from there deduce what the biological basis of emotions might be. The answer is a brain-based, computational account called the theory of constructed emotion.

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“…These recent tests reveal that evidence for universality is not robust when less constrained (see Figure 1) methods are employed [11*,12–14,15*]. When free labeling [13–15*] and sorting [14] methods are used to study emotion perceptions, agreement with universality predictions is extremely low (and often at-chance).…”

Section: Does Universality Undergird Cultural Variation?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When free labeling [13–15*] and sorting [14] methods are used to study emotion perceptions, agreement with universality predictions is extremely low (and often at-chance). For example, facial actions that are labeled as expressions of sadness, disgust, fear, and so on, by Europeans or Americans are rarely labeled as translational equivalents by individuals from small-scale societies in Africa and Papua New Guinea [12,15]. Similarly, when perceivers are asked to free-sort expressions, they do not generate piles for the canonical expressions built into the set (i.e., poses for anger, fear, sadness, disgust, happiness and neutral) [14].…”

Section: Does Universality Undergird Cultural Variation?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet these research findings should be contextualized by lab-based research revealing that methods involving forced-choice can produce artefactual agreement on an emotion label, even a nonsense one [20]. Further, some research has not revealed robust universalist performance, even when the constrained choice-from-array method (Figure 1) is used, but with modifications (e.g., minimizing repeated measures) [12]. This evidence indicates that support for universality is highly method-bound and calls into question the widely-held assumption that cultural variation in emotion perception is only superficial, due to undergirding universal emotion mechanisms.…”

Section: Does Universality Undergird Cultural Variation?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Revisiting diversity: cultural variation reveals the constructed nature of emotion perception

Gendron

2017

Current Opinion in Psychology

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The extent of cultural variation in emotion perception has long been assumed to be bounded by underlying universality. A growing body of research reveals, however, that evidence of universality in emotion perception is method-bound. Without the assumption of underlying universality, new lines of inquiry become relevant. Accumulating evidence suggests that cultures vary in what cues are relevant to perceptions of emotion. Further, cultural groups vary in their spontaneous inferences; mental state inference does not appear to be the only, or even most routine, mode of perception across cultures. Finally, setting universality assumptions aside requires innovation in the theory and measurement of culture. Recent studies reveal the promise of refinements in psychological approaches to culture. Together, the available evidence is consistent with a view of emotion perceptions as actively constructed by perceivers to fit the social and physical constraints of their cultural worlds.

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Reading emotions from faces in two indigenous societies.

Cited by 84 publications

References 76 publications

The fear gasping face as a threat display in a Melanesian society

The fear gasping face as a threat display in a Melanesian society

The theory of constructed emotion: an active inference account of interoception and categorization

Revisiting diversity: cultural variation reveals the constructed nature of emotion perception

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