Remote but in contact with history and the world

Gewald, Jan–Bart

doi:10.1073/pnas.1001284107

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 4 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It is questionable whether the Sadong and the Fore subgroup with more other-group contact should be considered isolated (see Sorenson, 1975, pp. 362 and 363), but we include them here to avoid falsely dichotomizing cultures as “isolated from” versus “exposed to” one another (Fridlund, 1994; Gewald, 2010). PNG = Papua New Guinea. a Specificity levels were not reported.…”

Section: Perceiving Emotions From Facial Movements: a Review Of The Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotional Expressions Reconsidered: Challenges to Inferring Emotion From Human Facial Movements

Barrett

Adolphs

Marsella

et al. 2019

Psychol Sci Public Interest

1,126

854

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It is commonly assumed that a person’s emotional state can be readily inferred from his or her facial movements, typically called emotional expressions or facial expressions. This assumption influences legal judgments, policy decisions, national security protocols, and educational practices; guides the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric illness, as well as the development of commercial applications; and pervades everyday social interactions as well as research in other scientific fields such as artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and computer vision. In this article, we survey examples of this widespread assumption, which we refer to as the common view, and we then examine the scientific evidence that tests this view, focusing on the six most popular emotion categories used by consumers of emotion research: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. The available scientific evidence suggests that people do sometimes smile when happy, frown when sad, scowl when angry, and so on, as proposed by the common view, more than what would be expected by chance. Yet how people communicate anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise varies substantially across cultures, situations, and even across people within a single situation. Furthermore, similar configurations of facial movements variably express instances of more than one emotion category. In fact, a given configuration of facial movements, such as a scowl, often communicates something other than an emotional state. Scientists agree that facial movements convey a range of information and are important for social communication, emotional or otherwise. But our review suggests an urgent need for research that examines how people actually move their faces to express emotions and other social information in the variety of contexts that make up everyday life, as well as careful study of the mechanisms by which people perceive instances of emotion in one another. We make specific research recommendations that will yield a more valid picture of how people move their faces to express emotions and how they infer emotional meaning from facial movements in situations of everyday life. This research is crucial to provide consumers of emotion research with the translational information they require.

show abstract

Section: Perceiving Emotions From Facial Movements: a Review Of The Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotional Expressions Reconsidered: Challenges to Inferring Emotion From Human Facial Movements

Barrett

Adolphs

Marsella

et al. 2019

Psychol Sci Public Interest

1,126

854

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The column showing universality-thesis task modifications presents four exceptions: foils (manipulation of affect in response alternatives), dynamic (moving faces), spontaneous (facial actions that occurred spontaneously, not posed), and between subjects (each participant was randomly assigned to match a face to only one emotion category in a between-subjects manipulation). Note 1 provides an overview of reporting inconsistencies that may affect this table (identical samples and results across reports). a These data were from more Westernized Fore (Ekman et al, 1969, p. 87) but are included here to avoid falsely dichotomizing cultures as “isolated from” versus “exposed to” one another (Crivelli & Fridlund, 2018; Gewald, 2010; Sauter, Eisner, Ekman, & Scott, 2010). b This study is less comparable with others: First, it was designed to examine emotion perception from vocalizations, but is included because perceivers matched to faces, and second, the sample was tested in a second language (Spanish) in which the participants received training. …”

Section: Epoch 1: Constrained Tests Of the Universality Thesismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Note 1 provides an overview of reporting inconsistencies that may affect this table (identical samples and results across reports). a These data were from more Westernized Fore (Ekman et al, 1969, p. 87) but are included here to avoid falsely dichotomizing cultures as "isolated from" versus "exposed to" one another (Crivelli & Fridlund, 2018;Gewald, 2010;Sauter, Eisner, Ekman, & Scott, 2010). b This study is less comparable with others: First, it was designed to examine emotion perception from vocalizations, but is included because perceivers matched to faces, and second, the sample was tested in a second language (Spanish) in which the participants received training.…”

Section: Nonementioning

confidence: 99%

Universality Reconsidered: Diversity in Making Meaning of Facial Expressions

Gendron

Crivelli

Barrett

2018

Curr Dir Psychol Sci

172

119

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It has long been claimed that certain facial movements are universally perceived as emotional expressions. The critical tests of this universality thesis were conducted between 1969 and 1975 in small-scale societies in the Pacific using confirmation-based research methods. New studies conducted since 2008 have examined a wider sample of small-scale societies, including on the African and South American continents. They used more discovery-based research methods, providing an important opportunity for reevaluating the universality thesis. These new studies reveal diversity, rather than uniformity, in how perceivers make sense of facial movements, calling the universality thesis into doubt. Instead, they support a perceiver-constructed account of emotion perception that is consistent with the broader literature on perception.

show abstract

“…The psychologists depicted Himba participants as people isolated from other cultural groups ( Sauter et al, 2010 ). In their eagerness to describe their participants as visually “isolated” from other cultural groups living in settlements geographically distant from urban centers, the psychologists did not report that the Himba they sampled had been in contact with other cultural groups since the 1860s ( Gewald, 2010 ). Therefore, the anthropologist’s main criticism was aimed at psychologists’ deficient descriptions and how they overlooked relevant diachronic information.…”

Section: Why Is Anthropology So Important For Cognitive Science?mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Multidisciplinary Approach to Research in Small-Scale Societies: Studying Emotions and Facial Expressions in the Field

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Although cognitive science was multidisciplinary from the start, an under-emphasis on anthropology has left the field with limited research in small scale, indigenous societies. Neglecting the anthropological perspective is risky, given that once-canonical cognitive science findings have often been shown to be artifacts of enculturation rather than cognitive universals. This imbalance has become more problematic as the increased use of Western theory-driven approaches, many of which assume human uniformity (“universality”), confronts the absence of a robust descriptive base that might provide clarifying or even contrary evidence. We highlight the need for remedies to such shortcomings by suggesting a two-fold methodological shift. First, studies conducted in indigenous societies can benefit by relying on multidisciplinary research groups to diminish ethnocentrism and enhance the quality of the data. Second, studies devised for Western societies can readily be adapted to the changing settings encountered in the field. Here, we provide examples, drawn from the areas of emotion and facial expressions, to illustrate potential solutions to recurrent problems in enhancing the quality of data collection, hypothesis testing, and the interpretation of results.

show abstract

Remote but in contact with history and the world

Cited by 7 publications

References 4 publications

Emotional Expressions Reconsidered: Challenges to Inferring Emotion From Human Facial Movements

Emotional Expressions Reconsidered: Challenges to Inferring Emotion From Human Facial Movements

Universality Reconsidered: Diversity in Making Meaning of Facial Expressions

A Multidisciplinary Approach to Research in Small-Scale Societies: Studying Emotions and Facial Expressions in the Field

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About