The Ingroup Advantage in Cross-Cultural Facial Expression Recognition: The effect of Spontaneity and Presentation Mode on Anger and Disgust

Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2024-02-17

Xia Fang Youxun Ge

Abstract： With the acceleration of globalization, effective cross-cultural communication has become increasingly important in modern society. One significant aspect of this communication involves accurately interpreting facial expressions of emotion. Previous research has found that nonverbal emotional communication is compromised when communication occurs between individuals from different cultural backgrounds compared to within cultural groups. Specifically, individuals are more accurate at recognizing facial expressions of individuals from their own cultural background than those from a different cultural background, a phenomenon known as ingroup advantage effect. However, most previous studies examining the ingroup advantage in facial expression recognition have focused primarily on posed and static facial expressions, paying less attention to spontaneous and dynamic facial expressions. Given that facial expressions in real-life interactions are often spontaneous and dynamic, it is imperative to investigate whether the ingroup advantage is influenced by the spontaneity (posed and spontaneous) and presentation mode (static and dynamic) of facial expressions.
To address these research objectives, we conducted two experiments involving participants from China, Canada, and the Netherlands. In Experiment 1, Chinese and Canadian participants were asked to recognize posed and spontaneous facial expressions of anger and disgust displayed by Chinese and Dutch models. In Experiment 2, Chinese and Dutch participants were recruited to recognize static and dynamic facial expressions of anger and disgust displayed by Chinese and Dutch models. Specifically, Experiment 1 included 126 Chinese participants and 126 Canadian participants, while Experiment 2 involved 82 Chinese participants and 75 Dutch participants. In both experiments, participants were asked to rate the intensity of facial expressions on scales of anger, disgust, fear, sadness, and joy ranging from 0 (not at all) to 100 (extremely).
The results indicated that the ingroup advantage was influenced by the spontaneity of the facial expressions. In three out of four cases (Eastern perceivers recognizing facial expressions of anger and disgust, and Western perceivers recognizing facial expressions of disgust), posed expressions exhibited a stronger ingroup advantage compared to spontaneous expressions. The exception was Western perceivers demonstrating a greater ingroup advantage when recognizing spontaneous facial expressions of anger. Furthermore, the findings revealed that the ingroup advantage was not influenced by the presentation mode of the facial expressions. In three out of four cases (Eastern perceivers recognizing facial expressions of anger and disgust, and Western perceivers recognizing facial expressions of disgust), there was no significant difference in the ingroup advantage between static and dynamic expressions. The only exception was Western perceivers' recognition of static expressions of anger, where the ingroup advantage was greater than that for dynamic expressions of anger.
In conclusion, the present research demonstrated that the ingroup advantage was more pronounced in posed expression recognition compared to spontaneous expression recognition, while the presentation mode of the expressions did not influence the ingroup advantage. These findings contribute to the existing knowledge in the field of cross-cultural emotion recognition by revealing differences in the ingroup advantage between posed and spontaneous expressions. Consequently, these results provide new empirical contributions that enhance our understanding of how individuals recognize expressions displayed by individuals from different cultural backgrounds.

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