A Cross-Cultural Study of Recognition Thresholds for Facial Expressions of Emotion

Abstract

Forty American (20 males, 20 females) and 31 Malaysian (20 males, II females) college students responded to 60 tachistoscopic presentations of photographs of facial expressions by judging the gender and the emotional expression of each face. The duration of exposure times ranged from 3 msec. to 800 msec. Stable recognition thresholds for most emotional expressions were established by 12 or 25 msec., with fear requiring 300 msec. to be recognized by each group of subjects. Happiness and sadness were the most accurately identified emotions, and anger and fear were the most difficult for subjects to recognize. Females were better than males at identifying surprise and fear, especially at the longer exposure times, and the ability to identify anger was strongly affected by both the sex and cultural background of the subject. Although there were several instances in which Malaysian and American subjects differed, overall accuracy of recognition and perceptual thresholds were not strongly related to differences in ethnic background.