Placing the face in context: cultural differences in the perception of facial emotion.
Two studies tested the hypothesis that in judging people's emotions from their facial expressions, Japanese, more than Westerners, incorporate information from the social context. In Study 1, participants viewed cartoons depicting a happy, sad, angry, or neutral person surrounded by other people expressing the same emotion as the central person or a different one. The surrounding people's emotions influenced Japanese but not Westerners' perceptions of the central person. These differences reflect differences in attention, as indicated by eye-tracking data (Study 2): Japanese looked at the surrounding people more than did Westerners. Previous findings on East-West differences in contextual sensitivity generalize to social contexts, suggesting that Westerners see emotions as individual feelings, whereas Japanese see them as inseparable from the feelings of the group.
Masuda
Takahiko
T
Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada. tmasuda@ualberta.ca
Ellsworth
Phoebe C
PC
Mesquita
Batja
B
Leu
Janxin
J
Tanida
Shigehito
S
Van de Veerdonk
Ellen
E
D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D018864:Cultural Diversity; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D012938:Social Perception; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D014481:United States