Universals and cultural differences in the judgments of facial expressions of emotion.

TLDR

The study examines cross‑cultural agreement in judging facial expressions of emotion. Participants from ten cultures completed a multi‑emotion, intensity‑rating task that extended beyond single‑label judgments used in earlier cross‑cultural research. Across cultures, participants consistently agreed on the most intense emotion, the second most intense emotion, and relative intensities within the same emotion, yet differed in absolute intensity ratings.

Abstract

We present here new evidence of cross-cultural agreement in the judgement of facial expression. Subjects in 10 cultures performed a more complex judgment task than has been used in previous cross-cultural studies. Instead of limiting the subjects to selecting only one emotion term for each expression, this task allowed them to indicate that multiple emotions were evident and the intensity of each emotion. Agreement was very high across cultures about which emotion was the most intense. The 10 cultures also agreed about the second most intense emotion signaled by an expression and about the relative intensity among expressions of the same emotion. However, cultural differences were found in judgments of the absolute level of emotional intensity.