FEATURES

A possible challenge for international collaboration?
Facial expressions may get lost in translation
By Rachel E. Jack, Postgraduate, Department of Psychology,
University of Glasgow, Scotland
People from East Asia read facial expressions differently thanpeople from Europe.
That’s according to findings of research
I helped conduct in 2008. The
research, published in the Cell Press
journal Current Biology, indicatesthat human communication ofemotion is more complex thanexperts had believed. Led by Roberto
Caldara at the University of Glasgow,
our research team found that facialexpressions that had been considereduniversally recognizable cannot be
used to reliably convey emotion incross-cultural situations.
We showed that Easterners and Westerners look at different
facial features to read facial expressions. Westerners look at theeyes and the mouth in equal measure, whereas Easterners favor
the eyes and neglect the mouth. This means Easterners havedifficulty distinguishing facial expressions that look similar
around the eye region.
How did our research team study cultural differences in therecognition of facial expressions? We recorded the eye
movements of 13 Western Caucasian and 13 East Asian people
while they observed pictures of expressive faces and put theminto categories: happy, sad, surprised, fearful, disgusted, angry
or neutral. The pictures of faces were standardized according
to the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), so each expression
displayed a specific combination of facial muscles typicallyassociated with a specific emotion. We then compared how
accurately, according to their particular eye-movement strategies,
participants read those pictures of facial expressions.
Easterners focused greater attention on the eyes and madesignificantly more errors than Westerners did. The cultural
specificity in eye movements likely reflects cultural specificity
in facial expressions. The data suggest that while Westerners
use the whole face to convey emotion, Easterners use theeyes more and mouth less.

Facial expressions that had been considered
universally recognizable cannot be used to reliably
convey emotion in cross-cultural situations.
A survey of Eastern versus Western emoticons supports thatidea. As they are the iconic representation of facial expressions,emoticons are used in cyberspace to convey different emotions.
Looking at the difference in use of emoticons in the West andthe East, we find that:■ Western emoticons primarily use the mouth to convey
emotional states, e.g., “: )” for happy and “: (“ for sad.
■ Eastern emoticons use the eyes, e.g. , “^.^ “ for happyand “;_;” for sad.

Western emoticons primarily
use the mouth to convey
emotional states, whereas
Eastern emoticons use theeyes. (Image courtesy ofAlison Bert, Senior
Writer/Editor, Elsevier, NY,NY, USA.)As my fellow researchers and I wrote in our 2009 ScienceDirect
article, "In sum, our data demonstrate genuine perceptual
differences between Western Caucasian and East Asian observers
and show that FACS-coded facial expressions are not universal
signals of human emotion. From here on, examining how thedifferent facets of cultural ideologies and concepts have diversified
these basic social skills will elevate knowledge of human emotion
processing from a reductionist to a more authentic representation.
“Otherwise, when it comes to communicating emotions acrosscultures, Easterners and Westerners will find themselves ‘lostin translation.’” LCrachael@psy.gla.ac.uk
www.psy.gla.ac.uk/staff/index.php?id=RJ002
www.cell.com

Reference
Jack, R. E., Blais, C., Scheepers, C., Schyns, P. G., & Caldara,
R. (2009, September). Cultural confusions show that facial
expressions are not universal. Current Biology, 19 (18): 1543-1548.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09609822... remind librarians to be aware of cultural differences when helping customers.
<< 4Also, when providing customer service,
the selection of the language to use isvery important. Some Chinese students
may want to practice their English as
long as there is the chance, so weshould speak English to them and thus
not just help them but help support theuniversity’s aim to develop students’English skills. For those who only wish
to speak Chinese, speaking a foreign
language to them may not only lower
the efficiency of problem solving but
may create a mental barrier between
these customers and librarians. Also, if
a customer is not fluent in English, if
you try your best to speak in her or his
native language, even trying to speakin her or his home accent, then thecustomer will feel closer to you,which is a good start between you
and your customers. LC
tony.lin@nottingham.edu.cn
http://is.nottingham.edu.cn

April 2010 Library Connect newsletter

5 |