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Report
Psychology 110 December 1,1999 Does Culture Affect the Way we Express Ourselves? Facial Expressionsculture :* The totality of socially transmitted behavior, patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought considered as the expression of a particular period, class, community, or population *as defined by the text book Psychology
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Background
We give different reasons why people act the way they do. Whether they are outgoing, shy, funny, pessimistic, etc,. we think of the motivation for their behavior. Their parents, friends, or whether they had brothers and sisters are all believed to have an effect on a persons way of expressing themselves One thing psychologists believe affects a person's behavior is the culture that they are apart of. People in high context communication cultures imply their meanings rather than to say them straightforwardly. This communication style is mostly found in collectivist cultures where they emphasize the wellness of the community as opposed to the well being of the individual. In low context communication cultures, meanings are frankly stated which goes along with the rules of the individualist culture, which focus on the fulfillment and good of the individual. Experiencing an emotion is a three-part process, where one experiences changes in their biological, mental, and behavioral state. While emotions vary from person to person and culture to culture, it has been found that some emotions are universal. Joy, surprise, disgust, anger, fear, shame, and sadness are considered primary emotions and are most commonly recognized by people all over the world. Mixing these and other emotions can produce secondary emotions. Expressing our emotions has most to do with the third component of the emotion process, the behavioral expression stage. One of the ways we express emotion is through facial expressions. The book says that when studying people cross-culturally, they have found differences and similarities in the way people express themselves emotionally through their facial expressions. According to Psychology, LLAII humans appear to recognize the facial expressions of primary emotions," but the varying degree in which we recognize these emotions is affected by our culture.
Hypothesis
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People who grew up in a different culture, (than American), will be less
likely to guess the facial expressions of the Americans. The way in which
one expresses their mood outwardly is affected by the culture that they live
in, therefore, they will less likely recognize outward expressions by someone
of another culture.
| by American you mean? all Americans? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Procedure
I came up with a list of emotions, five primary emotions, (joy, surprise, anger, fear, sadness,), and two emotions considered secondary, (confusion and thoughtfulness.) I used a majority of universal emotions to better eliminate the chances of variation between the participants. I took pictures of two people doing each of these emotions. I know the two people well, so I told them the emotion and then I described to them a situation that I knew would make them feel that emotion. I did this to make the facial expression more real. The people in the pictures were both women born and raised in America. Becky is a 41 year old mother of one. She was born in Tacoma, Washington, and has lived here all her life. Jessie is a seventeen year old student. She was born in Fort Lewis, Washington, and has lived in Tacoma, since her infancy.
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I had a group of 5 women look at the pictures and try to identify the emotions.
First, I gave them the set of pictures and they had to try and guess the
emotions. Next, I gave them a list of the emotions and they had to guess
again. I gave the women scores based on how many they got right in each section.
These women have a mixture of cultural backgrounds. Chin is 47 year old Korean
mother of two, who moved to America two years ago. Mikki is a 19 year old
Japanese student who recently moved to America after living in Japan her
whole life. Alison is a 18 year old American woman who has lived in Tacoma
since she was born. Lissa is a 51 year old Italian woman who moved from Italy
five years ago to help her two sons who run an Italian restaurant. Finally,
Fay is a 48 year old American woman who has lived in the Midwestern U.S.,
(Wisconsin), all her life, until recently moving to Las Vegas when her husband retired.
| identify here who is the "same " and "different" culture to models, based on your definition of culture. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Variables:
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It has been proven that women communicate and interpret nonverbal communication
more often than men do. Through social learning, girls are taught to show
their emotions, where as boys are encouraged to hide them. Because of these
factors mentioned in our text, I decided to use only women participants in
my study for both the pictures, and the guessers. This would rule out any
gender miscommunication variable.
| it would hold gender differences constant, rule out gender's effect on differences, which is, I guess, what she means. Never mind. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Something that came to my attention after getting my results was that age
might have been a factor in interpreting the emotions. Trying to find if
age was indeed a factor proved unsuccessful. The only variables listed in
the text that affect the reading of facial expressions were differences between
men and women and differences between cultures. Nevertheless, I have to wonder
if age had anything to do with both the way the women in the pictures expressed
their emotions, and how the guessers interpreted them.
The women were shown the pictures once, and had to guess the particular emotion being expressed. Then the women were shown the same pictures a second time, this time with a list of correct emotions. Dr. Link suggested to me that this created an element of practice for the women, and that could have affected the second results.
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A final variable in my study had to do with the women in the pictures. It
was commented on that Jessie was much harder to read than Becky was. This
led me to believe that she was either too expressive or not expressive enough.
Becky was easy to read, but were her expressions real? Though both women
say that their emotions were real, it is very unlikely that their emotions
and expressions are the exact match of how they would be if they were actually
feeling that emotion.
| you can compare this comment to the data; Becky’s overall % correct was not much higher. Subjects did perceive her as being easier to identify. What do these 2 findings together mean? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Choices:
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I chose to show the women the pictures and have them guess them because I
wanted to hear , without any lists or previous suggestion, what kind of emotions
the women came up with. For the second round, I gave them the list of emotions
to see if it was easier the second time with a little help.
| very clear choices | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Conclusion
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It is evident from the data that the woman who guessed the most right was
one who grew up in an American culture. The one who got the least right grew
up in a culture other than American, which proved hypothesis correct. Regardless,
the rest of the scores were pretty similar, and it would be beneficial to
take a look at why that is.
| no qualifiers in 1st statement; much better in second. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Alison's success at guessing the expressions could have been a mixture of
both being form the same culture and her age. She is between the ages of
the two women, but closer to the age of Jessie. It was said the Jessie was
the hardest to guess, so it is possible that being close to the same age
helped Alison to relate to the emotions expressed by Jessie.
Fay made the comment that, in the Midwest, people are very subdued and not as expressive as those she has met on the west coast. This is a possible reason for why she scored very close to the scores of the women from another culture. Looking at the text, I learned that people from collectivist cultures are conditioned to pay more attention to nonverbal communication, because in collectivist cultures that is a dominant form of communication. Mikki and Chin are both from collectivist cultures and are used to decoding expressions in their daily lives which might have helped their scores. For Next Time: This study is an interesting one to do, but the results do not clearly prove or disprove a hypothesis. If I were to do this study again, I would definitely find at least five more women, both from an American culture and from other cultures. This way, the results would more strongly support the conclusion.
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Something to focus on could be the difference in the results between those
from collectivist cultures and those from individual cultures. Since people
from collectivist cultures are more exposed to interpreting nonverbal
communication because meanings are hidden there, it would be interesting
to see if they got more right than those from individualist cultures.
Individualists tend to read non verbal communication less because in their
culture, if something is meant, it is straightforwardly said. This proved
to be true in my study where Chin and Mikki, both from collectivist cultures,
read the emotions better than Lissa, who is from an individualist culture.
| very nice analysis | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Another factor to focus on would be the amount of primary, (universal,) emotions
the participants got correct versus the secondary. In my study the results
of this would be inconclusive because of the amount of primary compared secondary
emotions, but if one made the list equal, it would be interesting to see
what the majority correct was. According to research, the primary emotions
should be guessed correctly more often, because emotions such as joy, surprise,
disgust, anger, fear, shame, and sadness, are recognized by everyone.
When I started out on this study, I didn't know much about the topic. Through reading about universal emotions, high and low context communication, and studies on gender and cultural effects on non verbal communication, I have learned a great deal on the subject. Knowing all of this, I can think of an infinite number of studies and variations one could do on the subject of emotions. Through this study, a student can learn one of the main lessons in Psychology 110 in communication and emotions, therefore, it is very effective.
| very good For Next Time section. Did a good enough job to begin exploring and breaking apart different ideas of what effects culture has. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Data:
Model: Jessie
Model: Becky
Works Cited:
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| Uba, Laura, Huang, Karen. Psychology. Longman: New York, 1999. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||