Recognition of Facial Expression in Three Cultures

Abstract

The results of three experiments show that emotions are accurately identified from facial expressions when (1) American and Malay observers judge expressions of Americans and Malaysians, (2) Malay observers use either a free-response task or a limited-response task, and (3) Temuan aborigine observers judge American expressions. The conclusion is that these results are not readily explained in terms of social learning, and support a theory of universal facial expressions of emotion.