Cultural differences should not separate us from each other, but rather cultural diversity brings a collective strength that can benefit all of humanity.
Robert Alan
Cultural specificity in facial expressions
If it is easy to define and picture primary emotions, things get trickier when looking at secondary emotions. When studying facial expressions of primary emotions, researchers can rely on physiological changes to confirm the emotional state of the subject (i.e., elevated heart-beat, sweat production, pupil dilatation). When investigating secondary emotions (see A story of emotion II), researchers have no other choices but to rely on self-report (i.e., asking the person how they think they feel) to assess the emotional state of the subject. We need to rely on people’s knowledge of their emotions and their ability to describe their feelings to associate those states with facial movements observed in a given context. We need the verbal to study the non-verbal.
Secondary emotions, their development and expression, are more likely to be culturally-influenced with bigger differences between people. The cultural environment an individual grow into is supposed to influence the context in which an emotion should be felt and expressed; the social context provides display rules and teaches when it is socially appropriate to display your feelings. Contrary to primary emotions, it was said that secondary emotions do not have prototypical, universal facial expressions; following research have identified facial traits reliably associated with some reported secondary emotions (shame, embarrassment, and contempt). Those facial traits cannot be defined as prototypical displays because they are usually one or two movements associated with various other non-defined movements, susceptible to variation between individuals.
When looking at cultural differences in facial expressions of emotion, there are two main schools of thoughts:
the partisans of an evolutionist view where if facial expressions conveyed an important message then they should be universally displayed and recognised, resulting from natural selection;
the partisans of culture-specific expressions, or cultural accents, defending that emotions and their facial displays are heavily influenced by the socio-cultural contexts studied.
Universal vs cultural: does it have to be an either-or debate?
The ability to be better at reading familiar faces (i.e., relatives and people from your cultural group) is defined as the ‘in-group advantage’; gestural and facial communication differ between cultures and even within-culture. For instance, Italians and French both use hands a lot when talking but their gestures differ in both forms and meanings. However, some movements are universally understood and allow basic communication between people speaking different languages.Cultural differences ought not to contradict an evolutionary view of facial expressions as different cultures may rely on different facial cues, functional in a given culture and for a given emotion. Moreover, it is also possible that a situation elicits different emotional responses in different cultures, resulting in different facial displays. Having some degree of standardised, recognisable facial traits makes sense in an evolutionary, adaptationist framework, but universality of form does not exclude variation in use.
Looking around us, being exposed to people from different countries broaden our comprehension of non-verbal communication and allow us to get better at understanding how the face is used in social interactions. Indeed, we should see faces not as the readouts of our internal emotional states, but as a very social tool used to influence and manipulate interactions.
To be continued...
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