Emotion Recognition in Ethiopia

Abstract

Subjects in Western and westernized literate cultures have always recognized facial expression of emotions more accurately than those tested in nonwesternized cultures. Is this difference attributable only to a different degree of familiarity with the experimental conditions or is this also due to different degrees of familiarity with the expression of the emotions? One hundred Ethiopians (fifty males and fifty females) differing in their degree of familiarization with Western culture were tested in a judgment study and asked to recognize posed facial expressions of emotions encoded by Western subjects. The data show that westernized subjects recognize the emotions presented more accurately than the nonwesternized subjects. In particular, varying degrees of familiarization with Western culture seem to influence recognition accuracy when a specific display rule is associated with the emotion presented.