Universals and Cultural Differences in Recognizing Emotions

@article{Elfenbein2003UniversalsAC,  title={Universals and Cultural Differences in Recognizing Emotions},  author={Hillary Anger Elfenbein and Nalini Ambady},  journal={Current Directions in Psychological Science},  year={2003},  volume={12},  pages={159 - 164},  url={https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:262438746}}
Moving beyond the earlier nature-versus-nurture debate, modern work on the communication of emotion has incorporated both universals and cultural differences. Classic research demonstrated that the intended emotions in posed expressions were recognized by members of many different cultural groups at rates better than predicted by random guessing. However, recent research has also documented evidence for an in-group advantage, meaning that people are generally more accurate at judging emotions… 

Figures and Tables from this paper

41 Citations

Cross-regional cultural recognition of adolescent voice emotion

Background In previous studies, an in-group advantage in emotion recognition has been demonstrated to suggest that individuals are more proficient in identifying emotions within their own culture

When familiarity breeds accuracy: cultural exposure and facial emotion recognition.

Results suggest that the universal affect system governing emotional expression may be characterized by subtle differences in style across cultures, which become more familiar with greater cultural contact.

Cross-Cultural Emotion Recognition among Canadian Ethnic Groups

This study aims to investigate cultural differences in recognition accuracy as well as the in-group advantage hypothesis for emotion recognition among sub-Saharan African, Chinese, and French

Emotion in Organizations: A Review and Theoretical Integration in Stages

Emotion has become one of the most popular - and popularized - areas within organizational scholarship. This chapter attempts to review and bring together within a single framework the wide and often

Processes linking cultural ingroup bonds and mental health: the roles of social connection and emotion regulation

A model in which ethnocultural identifications and ingroup affiliations were hypothesized explicitly to enhance social connectedness was proposed and tested, which would in turn promote expectancy for effective regulation of negative emotions and reduce self-reported symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Facial resemblance to emotions: group differences, impression effects, and race stereotypes.

The results suggest that intergroup relations may be strained not only by cultural stereotypes but also by adaptive responses to emotion expressions that are overgeneralized to groups whose faces subtly resemble particular emotions.

Other ethnicity effects in ensemble coding of facial expressions

Cultural difference in ensemble emotion perception is an important research question, providing insights into the complexity of human cognition and social interaction. Here, we conducted two

The perception of emotional prosody in Mandarin Chinese words and sentences

Emotional prosody refers to the ways in which the tone of voice can be modulated to convey emotions, feelings, and attitudes. Previous studies have explored the perception of emotional prosody and

17 References

On the universality and cultural specificity of emotion recognition: a meta-analysis.

A meta-analysis examined emotion recognition within and across cultures, finding emotions were universally recognized at better-than-chance levels and cross-cultural accuracy was lower in studies that used a balanced research design, and higher in Studies that used imitation rather than posed or spontaneous emotional expressions.

Cultural Influences on the Perception of Emotion

Previous cross-cultural research on the emotions have operationalized culture by country. This article suggests that the use of stable and meaningful dimensions of cultural variability, such as those

Cultural Similarity's Consequences

Previous research found null results examining predicted relationships between emotion recognition accuracy and Hofstede's cultural dimensions. Prior theory was "static," linking cultural profiles

Is there an in-group advantage in emotion recognition?

Overall, where Matsumoto considers subtle cross-cultural differences in emotional expression a methodological artifact in judgment studies, the present authors find a core phenomenon worthy of attention.

When familiarity breeds accuracy: cultural exposure and facial emotion recognition.

Results suggest that the universal affect system governing emotional expression may be characterized by subtle differences in style across cultures, which become more familiar with greater cultural contact.

The effects of language on judgments of universal facial expressions of emotion

Because of the close connection between culture and language, a number of writers have suggested that bilinguals will differ in their behavior because of differences in the degree of assimilation of

Is there universal recognition of emotion from facial expression? A review of the cross-cultural studies.

Facial expressions and emotion labels are probably associated, but the association may vary with culture and is loose enough to be consistent with various alternative accounts, 8 of which are discussed.

Nonverbal “Accents”

It is found that facial expressions of emotion can contain nonverbal accents that identify the expresser's nationality or culture, and suggests that extreme positions regarding the universality of emotional expressions are incomplete.

Methodological requirements to test a possible in-group advantage in judging emotions across cultures: comment on Elfenbein and Ambady (2002) and evidence.

The author discusses 2 methodological requirements for studies to test adequately the in-group advantage hypothesis and an additional requirement in reviewing multiple judgment studies and examining variance in judgment effects across those studies.

What and Where are the Primary Affects? Some Evidence for a Theory

A set of 69 facial photographs of models simulating affective neutrality and the eight primary affects of interest, enjoyment, surprise, distress, fear, shame, contempt, and anger were presented to a

Related Papers

Showing 1 through 3 of 0 Related Papers