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 different cultures in the same individual. We tested this notion by obtaining data from bilingual (English and Hindi) college students in India using a well-studied cross-cultural research paradigm involving emotional perception. Subjects judged universal facial expressions of emotion in two separate sessions, one conducted entirely in English, the other in Hindi. In each session, they judged which emotion was being portrayed, and how intensely. Subjects recognized anger, fear, and sadness more accurately in English than in Hindi. They also attributed greater intensity to female photos of anger when rating in Hindi, but attributed greater intensity to female photos of sadness when rating in English. These findings were discussed in relation to the theoretical connection between culture and language.     

Reducing within-group overconfidence through group identity and between-group confidence judgments

Individuals belonging to a social group make judgments about their relative standing within the group as well as about the relative standing of their group among other groups. On average, individuals exhibit overconfidence bias in both types of judgments in a variety of settings. We hypothesize, however, that the latter bias counteracts the former; therefore, the salience of between-group judgments should mitigate within-group overconfidence. Our second hypothesis is that within-group overconfidence is reduced in the presence of group identity. Using a 2 × 2 between-subject design, we test, and find strong support for, these hypotheses in a laboratory experiment.     

The effect of ethnic identity on the employment of immigrants

This study evaluates the effect of ethnic identity on the employment level of immigrants in Greece. Treating ethnic identity as a composite of key cultural elements the estimations suggest that employment is positively associated with assimilation and integration and negatively associated with separation and marginalization. In all cases, assimilation provides the highest employment returns, whilst, marginalization provides the highest employment losses. This study adds to the literature by setting up hypotheses, and directly measuring immigrants’ ethnic identity commitments. The current results have potentially important implications for post-immigration policies indicating that assimilation and integration policies may be beneficial in terms of labor market outcomes.     

The effect of spatial arrangement on judgments and errors in interpreting graphs

The spatial arrangement of social network data in graphs can influence viewers' perceptions of structural characteristics such as prominence, bridging and grouping. To study the extent of this effect, we conducted an experiment with 80 graduate students. Each student viewed three of five different spatial arrangements of the same network. We found that viewers' perceptions of structural features of the network changed as the spatial arrangement of the network changed.     

Learning in emotion judgments: Training and the cross-cultural understanding of facial expressions

This preliminary study presents data on training to improve the accuracy of judging facial expressions of emotion, a core component of emotional intelligence. Feedback following judgments of angry, fearful, sad, and surprised states indicated the correct answers as well as difficulty level of stimuli. Improvement was greater for emotional expressions originating from a cultural group more distant from participants’ own family background, for which feedback likely provides greater novel information. These results suggest that training via feedback can improve emotion perception skill. Thus, the current study also provides suggestive evidence for cultural learning in emotion, for which previous research has been cross-sectional and subject to selection biases. Hillary Anger Elfenbein is affiliated with Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations, University of California, Berkeley, CA. This research was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Behavioral Science Track Award for Rapid Transition 1R03MH071294-1. I thank Howard Friedman, Ursula Hess, Abigail Marsh, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, and Ken Coelho and Cindy Lau for research assistance.     

The effect of type of task on children's identification of facial expressions

The performance of children at ages 4, 6, and 8 years was compared on the four types of task most often used in facial expression studies with children. We examined whether the order of mastery of emotions at different ages was constant across tasks, or alternatively, if it was task-specific. The relative difficulty of the tasks was also investigated, with the aim of arranging them into a hierarchy of increasing difficulty. The four tasks used were situation discrimination, matching discrimination, forced choice labeling, and free labeling. Accuracy was found to increase with age, but the interaction between age, type of task, and emotion was not significant. These results suggest that conclusions about the ordering of specific emotions from least to most difficult at different ages is not task dependent. Nevertheless, a significant interaction found between task and emotion suggests that such conclusions should specify which type of task generated the pattern. A hierarchy of difficulty for the tasks was only partially supported. Performance on the first three tasks was very similar but performance on free labeling was significantly poorer.     

Do infants express discrete emotions? Adult judgments of facial,vocal, and body actions

Adult judges were presented with videotape segments showing an infant displaying facial configurations hypothesized to express discomfort/pain, anger, or sadness according to differential emotions theory (Izard, Dougherty, & Hembree, 1983). The segments also included the infant's nonfacial behavior and aspects of the situational context. Judges rated the segments using a set of emotion terms or a set of activity terms. Results showed that judges perceived the discomfort/pain and anger segments as involving one or more negative emotions not predicted by differential emotions theory. The sadness segments were perceived as involving relatively little emotion overall. Body activity accompanying the discomfort/pain and anger configurations was judged to be more jerky and active than body activity accompanying the sadness configurations. The sadness segments were accompanied by relatively little body movement overall. The results thus fail to conform to the predictions of differential emotions theory but provide information that may contribute to the development of a theory of infant expressive behavior.This article is based on the second author's master's thesis. The authors thank Dennis Ross for his expert assistance in the data analyses.     

Enhancing children's decoding of facial expression

A procedure for improving children's skill in decoding facial expressions of emotion was studied in this experiment. In the first phase of the study, thirty-six fifth and sixth grade children watched video segments showing facial expressions of stimulus persons experiencing happiness, sadness, or fear and tried to identify each stimulus person's emotion. Subjects assigned to the feedback condition were given the correct answer for each segment, and subjects assigned to the no feedback condition received no information. Results for the second phase of the experiment, in which subjects' decoding skills were assessed, showed that the feedback method was effective in improving general decoding abilities. Furthermore, differences between subjects in the feedback and no feedback conditions were affected by subjects' sex and the specific emotion being decoded.Portions of this study were presented at the annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, Boston, April, 1989. This study was funded by a grant from the Marks Meadow Research Foundation, as well as through ongoing support from the National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research, U.S. Department of Education, to the second author.     

Angle of regard: The effect of vertical viewing angle on the perception of facial expressions

Two studies were conducted using video records of real faces and three-dimensional schematic faces to investigate the perceptual distortions introduced by viewing faces at a vertical angle and their influence on the attribution of emotional expressions and attitudes. The results indicate that faces seen from below were perceived as morepositive and lessnegative, while faces seen from above appeared morenegative and lesspositive. This effect seems to be moderated by interindividual differences in facial morphology, and perhaps by differences in dynamic aspects of expressions. The second study investigated the respective contribution of the upper half and the lower half of the face to the perceptual distortion found. In general, judges based their attributions of emotional state more on cues from the upper half of the face.     

Emotional traits and recognition of facial expression of emotion

The relationship between an individual's habitual, emotional dispositions or tendencies — an aspect of personality — and his ability to recognize facially expressed emotions was explored. Previous studies have used global scores of recognition accuracy across several emotions, but failed to examine the relationship between emotion traits and recognition of specific emotion expressions. In the present study, these more specific relationships were examined. Results indicated that females with an inhibited-non-assertive personality style tended to have poorer emotion recognition scores than more socially oriented females. In contrast, for males, the relationship between traits and recognition scores was much more emotion specific: Emotion traits were not significantly related to a global measure of recognition accuracy but were related to recognition rates of certain emotion expressions — sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. For most of the emotions, males appeared to be more likely to see what they feel. Possible explanations of the findings in terms of perceptual set and other mechanisms are discussed. Implications for clinical studies and research are noted. The study also highlights the importance of separate analysis of data for specific emotions, as well as for sex.     

Validity judgments of rumors heard multiple times: the shape of the truth effect

Research on the illusory truth effect has found that repeated presentation of uncertain statements increases validity judgments of those statements. Three experiments explored the shape of the repetition–validity–judgment relationship over multiple repetitions, the mediating role of processing fluency, and the moderating role of dispositional skepticism. Participants read narratives in which different rumors were repeated 0–6 or 0–9 times; validity estimates, processing fluency, and dispositional skepticism were also measured. Validity judgments were logarithmically related to repetitions; this effect was mediated by processing fluency, and moderated slightly by skepticism. Results explore the boundaries of the processing fluency contrast account of the illusory truth effect, suggest a minor role for skepticism, and inform research on belief in rumor (uncertain statements in circulation).     

The certainty of judgments in health evaluations

Most evaluators seem to presume that all evaluative studies should result in conclusive evidence. Often, however, less than conclusive evidence may not only suffice, but be the only real alternative under conditions of limited evaluation resources. Three levels of evidence common to evaluation studies are discussed: suggestive evidence, preponderant evidence, and conclusive evidence. Ten factors are also presented which can be used to determine the level of certainty appropriate for a given evaluation study. Consideration of these factors enables the evaluator to specify when less than conclusive evidence is acceptable.     

Sexual minority women's gender identity and expression: challenges and supports

Sexual minority women were divided into four groups to study their gender identities (butch and femme), and gender expression (traditionally gendered and non-traditionally gendered women who do not identify as butch or femme). Experiences of heterosexist events (discrimination, harassment, threats of violence, victimization, negative emotions associated with these events), mental health (self esteem, stress, depression), and supports for a sexual minority identity (social support, outness, internalized homophobia) were examined across these groups. Findings suggested that butch-identified women experienced more heterosexist events than femme women or women with non-traditional gender expressions. There were no differences in mental health variables.     

Does identity matter for adaptation? The influence of acculturation identity on the well-being and delinquency of adolescent students in Europe

ABSTRACT

This study examines the implications of identity for the adaptation of immigrant children in the European context. Using the migrant sample from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU), this study examines how identity is related to the outcomes of well-being and delinquency of high school students. Results from multilevel models lend partial support to the theorized role of acculturation identity. Integrated students had higher well-being compared with assimilated students, challenging the notion that sole national affiliation is the most advantageous strategy for adaptation and thereby supporting a selective acculturation perspective. In addition, separate analyses of European and non-European immigrant students produced divergent results. While the ethnic identity of students with non-European backgrounds was negatively associated with delinquent behavior, separated students of European background reported higher delinquency compared with their assimilated counterparts, suggesting that acculturated identity works in different ways between immigrant groups and that the protective effect of ethnic identity against delinquency is only present for migrants students of non-European backgrounds.     

Effects of facial expression and stare duration on walking speed: Two field experiments

Two field experiments investigated the generality of the stare-escape phenomenon for pedestrians. Experiment 1, conducted at a traffic intersection, failed to replicate a previous finding that being stared at leads to faster walking speed. One hypothesis that could explain this failure is that the relatively short staring times used in Experiment 1 were insufficient for subjects to attribute a threatening meaning to the stare. In Experiment 2, conducted at a library elevator, duration of staring was systematically varied—either 2 seconds or more than 15 seconds. Consistent with the attribution time hypothesis, subjects increased walking speed after a long stare but decreased it after a short stare. In both experiments a smile coupled with a stare appeared to neutralize the effects of a stare alone.The authors would like to thank Clyde Hendrick for his valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper.