CROSS-CULTURAL RECOGNITION OF POSED FACIAL EXPRESSIONS OF EMOTION

The research examined the effects of subject and model culture/ethnicity on the recognition of posed facial expressions of emotion. Twenty-seven Maori and 27 Pakeha subjects were presented with photographs of Maori and Pakeha stimulus persons expressing anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise. Subjects were then asked to identify each of the expressions from a list of 11 emotional labels. Binomial tests confirmed above chance accuracy for the recognition of all emotions except fear. A 2 x 2 analysis of variance of overall recognition scores revealed main effects for both model and subject ethnicity. The emotional expressions of Maori models were more accurately recognized than those of Pakeha models; Pakeha subjects, however, were more accurate than Maori subjects in their identification of emotions. There was no significant interaction effect.