There were differences in how the Westerners and East Asians responded – for example, the East Asians were a lot less consistent in how they categorised some emotions (especially surprise, fear, disgust and anger), and saw movements of the eyes as more important for interpreting emotional intensity. The researchers then presented participants from a Western or an East Asian background with these avatars showing random combinations of facial muscle movements, and the participants had to say when they recognised one of the six basic emotions. They used a unique 3D computer system to create digital avatars that could independently manipulate all 42 muscles in the face. No-one disputes that facial movements convey what we’re feeling, but there is some debate over the cultural universality of the emotional expressions.Īt the Royal Society’s 2015 Face Facts exhibition, researchers from the University of Glasgow presented their evidence that the interpretation of emotional facial expressions is not, in fact, universal. Since Charles Darwin first compared the emotional displays of humans and animals, it’s been argued by many experts that humans exhibit six basic emotions via six core facial expressions: happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, anger and sadness. “Social camouflage of dominance and trustworthiness is probably commonplace in everyday interactions,” the researchers explain.Įast Asian people tend to rely more on eye movements when interpreting expressions (© iStock) An animated face morphed to look optimally untrustworthy based on its basic structure was rendered trustworthy by programming it to pull a facial expression that involved raising the lips and cheeks. Psychologists call this ‘social camouflaging’ and it was demonstrated in a study published in 2014 by researchers at the University of Glasgow. There’s some recent evidence that we can overcome the personality signals given off by our static facial structure, simply by pulling the right facial expressions. This suggests there’s something else about brown-eyed men that creates an impression of dominance. But when a blue-eyed man dons brown contact lenses, this does nothing to increase how dominant he appears to strangers. For example, there’s evidence that men with brown eyes are perceived to be more dominant than men with blue eyes.

Other face-based character assumptions appear at first to be tied to specific facial features, but the reality is more complicated.

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