More evidence for the universality of a contempt expression

Since its publication in 1986, Ekman and Friesen's (1986) discovery of a universal facial expression unique to contempt has received considerable attention (e.g., see Ekman & Friesen, 1988; Ekman & Heider, 1988; Ekman, O'Sullivan, & Matsumoto, 1991a, 1991b; Izard & Haynes, 1988; Russell, 1991a, 1991b; Ricci Bitti, Brighetti, Garotti, Boggi-Cavallo, 1989). Actually, much of this argument began before there was adequate sampling of contempt photographs across many cultures. In order to address this concern, this study reports judgment data on all 12 photos used in previous studies depicting the contempt expression from four non-American cultures. The data provide a strong replication of Ekman and Friesen's (1986) and Ekman and Heider's (1988) findings for a universal expression of contempt.The research reported in this article was supported in part by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH 42749-01), and by a Faculty Award for Creativity, Scholarship, and Research from San Francisco State University. I would like to thank Veronica Ton for her aid in the collection of the Vietnamese data; Valerie Hearn for her aid in the collection of the Polish and Hungarian data; Masami Kobayashi, Fazilet Kasri, Deborah Krupp, Bill Roberts, and Michelle Weissman for their aid in my research program on emotion; and William Irwin for his aid in the data analysis.     

American-Japanese cultural differences in intensity ratings of facial expressions of emotion

Findings from a recent study by Ekmanet al. (1987) provided evidence for cultural disagreement about the intensity ratings of universal facial expressions of emotion. We conducted a study that examined the basis of these cultural differences. Japanese and American subjects made two separate intensity ratings of Japanese and Caucacian posers portraying anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. The Americans had higher mean intensity ratings than the Japanese for all emotions except disgust, regardless of the culture or gender of the poser. Americans gave happy and angry photos the highest intensity ratings, while Japanese gave disgust photos the highest ratings. But there was considerable cross-cultural consistency in the relative differences among photos.This study was conducted as part of a doctoral dissertation by the first author, under the supervision of the second author. David Matsumoto was supported by a minority fellowship from the American Psychological Association, under a Clinical Training Grant from NIMH (MH13833), and by a Regents Fellowship from the University of California, Berkeley. Paul Ekman was supported by a Research Scientist Award from NIMH (MH06092).We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of Wallace V. Friesen to the development of the facial stimuli used in this study, Tsutomu Kudoh for his aid in collecting the Japanese data, and Wallace Friesen and Maureen O'Sullivan for their aid during data analysis.     

American-Japanese Differences in Multiscalar Intensity Ratings of Universal Facial Expressions of Emotion

This study reanalyzes American and Japanese multiscalar ratings of universal facial expressions originally collected by Matsumoto (1986), of which only single emotion scales were analyzed and reported by Matsumoto and Ekman (1989). The nonanalysis of the entire data set ignored basic and important questions about the nature of judgments of universal facial expressions of emotion. These were addressed in this study. We found that (1) observers in both cultures perceived multiple emotions in universal facial expressions, not just one; (2) cultural differences occurred on multiple emotion scales for each expression, not just the target scale; (3) the directions of those differences differed according to the rating scale used and the expression being observed; and (4) no underlying dimension was evidenced that would account for these differences. These findings raise new questions about the nature of the judgment process and the role of judgment studies in supporting the universality thesis, the bases of which need to be explored in future research and incorporated in future theories of emotion and universality.     

The contempt expression and the relativity thesis

Ekman and Freisen (1986) reported a highly recognizable, pancultural facial expression unique to contempt. This article reports three studies in which the emotion inferred from that expression, a unilaterally raised and tightened lip, varied with the context of judgment. Different contexts of judgment were created by asking subjects to judge zero, one, or six other facial expressions posed by different actors before judging the lip curl. The lip curl was labeledcontempt in one context,disgust in another, andsadness in a third. Ekman and Friesen's result was replicated, but only when the specific anchoring context used in the original studies was reinstituted. People's judgments as to which emotion is conveyed by a particular facial expression can therefore be influenced by the method of gathering judgments.This study was funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I thank Dee-Ann Matsugu, Lara Weick, and Lisa Wong for their careful work on this study. I especially thank Darrin Lehman for his advice.     

Intrinsic Value,Alternative Possibilities,and Reason

I address three issues in this paper: first, just as many have thought that there is a requirement of alternative possibilities for the truth of judgments of moral responsibility, is there reason to think that the truth of judgments of intrinsic value also presupposes our having alternatives? Second, if there is this sort of requirement for the truth of judgments of intrinsic value, is there an analogous requirement for the truth of judgments of moral obligation on the supposition that obligation supervenes on goodness? Third, if the truth of judgments of intrinsic value and those of moral obligation do presuppose our having access to alternatives, what should be said about whether determinism imperils the truth of such judgments? I defend an affirmative answer to the first question, a more guarded answer to the second, and a yet more restrained answer to the third.     

Nested models of relative judgment: Applications to a similarity averaging model

A theoretical analysis of the Eisler and Ekman (1959) model of similarity judgments for unidimensional continua is presented, based on a general model of relative judgment. This general model assumes that judgments are mediated by perceived relations of pairs of stimuli, that there exists a transformation of the judgmental response that is a function of the sensory ratio of the two stimuli, and that response bias operates in a multiplicative manner. Three structural conditions are presented, each imposing constraints on the structure of observed judgments. The structural conditions define threenested models of relative judgment, with the second a weakened version of the first, and the third a weakened version of the second. The special virtue of the general model is that it is applicable to a variety of judgmental tasks (e.g., ratio estimation, similarity, pair comparison), the key being derivation of theresponse transformation conforming to the structural conditions. The structural conditions thus constitute necessary conditions for several different judgmental models. The theory was first applied with success to ratio estimation judgments (Fagot, 1978), and this paper applies the general model to the Eisler and Ekman similarity “averaging” model. Empirical tests were carried out on published data for pitch, darkness, visual area, and heaviness judgments. Although the strong form of the model presented by Eisler and Ekman was rejected, weakened versions were generally supported by the data. These results were similar to those obtained for ratio estimation (Fagot, 1978), and are interpreted to be very promising for the general model of relative judgment.     

The universality of a contempt expression: A replication

Two experiments replicated Ekman and Friesen's finding of an expression that signals contempt across cultures. The subjects, from West Sumatra, Indonesia, were members of a culture that differs in a number of ways from Western cultures. In one experiment the subjects judged photographs of Japanese and American faces, both males and females, which showed many different emotions. There was very high agreement about which expressions signaled contempt in preference to anger, disgust, happiness, sadness, fear, or surprise. In a second experiment the Indonesian subjects judged expressions shown by members of their own culture, and again there was very high agreement about which expression signals contempt.This study was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH 41100). Paul Ekman's work is also supported by a Research Scientist Award from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH 06092). Karl G. Heider's work was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH 38221). We are grateful to Maureen O'Sullivan for her many helpful comments on this report.     

Facial morphology and children's categorization of facial expressions of emotions: a comparison between Asian and Caucasian faces

The effects of Asian and Caucasian facial morphology were examined by having Canadian children categorize pictures of facial expressions of basic emotions. The pictures were selected from the Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion set developed by D. Matsumoto and P. Ekman (1989). Sixty children between the ages of 5 and 10 years were presented with short stories and an array of facial expressions, and were asked to point to the expression that best depicted the specific emotion experienced by the characters. The results indicated that expressions of fear and surprise were better categorized from Asian faces, whereas expressions of disgust were better categorized from Caucasian faces. These differences originated in some specific confusions between expressions.     

Judgement of Authenticity of Smiles and Detection of Facial indexes]

The smile is one of the most often expressed emotions during social interactions. It can be authentic, that is, associated with a joyful emotional state in the person expressing it, but it can also be false, that is, deliberately produced in the absence of that emotional state in order to deceive one or more individuals (Ekman, 1993). Even though the fake smile very much resembles the authentic smile, it generally does not constitute the perfect simile. The fake smile more often has a certain degree of asymmetry than the authentic smile (Ekman, Hager, & Friesen, 1981) and it uses the cheek raiser action less often than with the authentic smile (Ekman, Friesen, & O'Sullivan, 1988; Frank, Ekman, & Friesen, 1993). This study looked at the knowledge that adults have of these differences as well as their perceptive ability to detect them. The visual stimuli presented to participants were prepared using the Facial Action Coding System (Ekman & Friesen, 1978). Results show that participants detected the differences between the two types of smile and that detection was better using smile asymmetry than with the cheek raiser action. Analysis of the use of response categories in the detection task indicated that participants underestimated the differences between smiles when they were different and that this tendency was more apparent with the cheek raiser detection method than for asymmetry detection. Participants also demonstrated a better knowledge of smile asymmetry than cheek raiser action. The knowledge gathered suggests that the ability of the receptor to judge smile authenticity is limited by perceptive factors. However, the mediation analyses that we conducted show the judging smile authenticity is not limited to simple perceptive detection of facial clues. Detecting facial clues is a necessary condition for correctly assessing smile authenticity, but it does not explain the variance in these assessments. We believe that this variance would be due more to the importance that participants give to facial clues. Finally, our results show that the capacity to detect differences between authentic and fake smiles is not easy to change. Participants who received modified information on changes of appearance linked to the two facial parameters were not more likely to detect the differences than participants who did not receive information.     

Facial Morphology and Children's Categorization of Facial Expressions of Emotions: A Comparison Between Asian and Caucasian Faces

The effects of Asian and Caucasian facial morphology were examined by having Canadian children categorize pictures of facial expressions of basic emotions. The pictures were selected from the Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion set developed by D. Matsumoto and P. Ekman (1989). Sixty children between the ages of 5 and 10 years were presented with short stories and an array of facial expressions, and were asked to point to the expression that best depicted the specific emotion experienced by the characters. The results indicated that expressions of fear and surprise were better categorized from Asian faces, whereas expressions of disgust were better categorized from Caucasian faces. These differences originated in some specific confusions between expressions.     

Metacognition of emotional face recognition

While humans are adept at recognizing emotional states conveyed by facial expressions, the current literature suggests that they lack accurate metacognitions about their performance in this domain. This finding comes from global trait-based questionnaires that assess the extent to which an individual perceives him or herself as empathic, as compared to other people. Those who rate themselves as empathically accurate are no better than others at recognizing emotions. Metacognition of emotion recognition can also be assessed using relative measures that evaluate how well a person thinks s/he has understood the emotion in a particular facial display as compared to other displays. While this is the most common method of metacognitive assessment of people's judgments of learning or their feelings of knowing, this kind of metacognition--"relative meta-accuracy"--has not been studied within the domain of emotion. As well as asking for global metacognitive judgments, we asked people to provide relative, trial-by-trial prospective and retrospective judgments concerning whether they would be right or wrong in recognizing the expressions conveyed in particular facial displays. Our question was: Do people know when they will be correct in knowing what expression is conveyed, and do they know when they do not know? Although we, like others, found that global meta-accuracy was unpredictive of performance, relative meta-accuracy, given by the correlation between participants' trial-by-trial metacognitive judgments and performance on each item, were highly accurate both on the Mind in the Eyes task (Experiment 1) and on the Ekman Emotional Expression Multimorph task (in Experiment 2).     

Facial expression recognition ability among women with borderline personality disorder: implications for emotion regulation?

This study examined recognition of facial expressions of emotion among women diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD; n = 21), compared to a group of women with histories of childhood sexual abuse with no current or prior diagnosis of BPD (n = 21) and a group of women with no history of sexual abuse or BPD (n = 20). Facial recognition was assessed by a slide set developed by Ekman and Matsumoto (Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion and Neutral Faces, 1992), expanded and improved from previous slide sets, and utilized a coding system that allowed for free responses rather than the more typical fixed-response format. Results indicated that borderline individuals were primarily accurate perceivers of others' emotions and showed a tendency toward heightened sensitivity on recognition of fear, specifically. Results are discussed in terms of emotional appraisal ability and emotion dysregulation among individuals with BPD.     

Doxastic planning and epistemic internalism

In the following I discuss the debate between epistemological internalists and externalists from an unfamiliar meta-epistemological perspective. In doing so, I focus on the question of whether rationality is best captured in externalist or internalist terms. Using a conception of epistemic judgments as “doxastic plans,” I characterize one important subspecies of judgments about epistemic rationality—focusing on the distinctive rational/functional role these judgments play in regulating how we form beliefs. Then I show why any judgment that plays this role should be expected to behave the manner internalists predict. In this way, I argue, we can explain why our basic toolbox for epistemic evaluation includes an internalist conception of rationality.     

Centering on Demonstrative Thought

The nature of perceptual demonstratives, the ‘that F’ component of judgments of the form ‘that F is G’ based on perceptual input, has been a topic of interest for many philosophers. Another related, though distinct, question concerns the nature of demonstrative judgments based not on current perceptual input, but instead derived from memory. I argue that the account put forward by John Campbell fails to adequately account for memory-based demonstrative thought.     

France,the Veil and Religious Freedom

Abstract

In 2004 France banned ostentatious religious symbols – most notably the Muslim veil – from state schools across the country. French lawmakers believed this ban would encourage integration and help the country understand itself in the light of increasing religious and ethnic diversification. As the riots in the autumn of 2005 so aptly demonstrated, however, tensions remained high. Not only does this call the purpose of the law into question from a social standpoint, but once again forces us to question it in the light of human rights law. In the first part of my article I examine the history of the debate around religious symbols in state schools and look at the deliberations of the Commission called to study laïcité in a ‘new France’, the same Commission that recommended a law be crafted. On the basis of ethnographic observations, I argue that the veil is but a symbol of a larger complex of issues that have to do with the dynamics of areas of low income and high crime that are bounded spaces. In the second part of my article I look at the law banning religious symbols within the framework of human rights. I show that the right to religious manifestation is a longstanding and consistently articulated norm that has in the last ten years been limited in its scope through a wide understanding of the limitations clause. Since France based its decision on the advice and judgments of the European Court I look at, and ultimately call into question, two decisions, Refah Partisi v Turkey and Sahin v Turkey. I argue that states are given too wide a margin of appreciation and that the judgments have been driven by a narrow and incorrect view of Islam.     

Contextualism,Invariantism and Semantic Blindness

Epistemic contextualism, many critics argue, entails that ordinary speakers are blind to the fact that knowledge claims have context-sensitive truth conditions. This attribution of blindness, critics add, seriously undermines contextualism. I show that this criticism and, in general, discussions about the error theory entailed by contextualism, greatly underestimates the complexity and diversity of the data about ordinary speakers’ inter-contextual judgments, as well as the range of explanatory moves that are open to both invariantists and contextualists concerning such judgments. Contextualism does entail that some speakers suffer from semantic blindness; however, at its roots, this blindness concerns not the context-sensitivity of knowledge claims, but the question whether knowledge sentences possess context-independent truth conditions. I argue that this blindness should not be deemed problematic, but that invariantism entails an error theory that is, by comparison, much more troubling.     

Incontinence and Perception

The traditional problem of incontinence raises the question of whether there is any way to account for action contrary to judgment. When one acts, rather than only being acted upon by circumstances, the action is explained in terms of the reasons for action one judges oneself to have. It therefore seems impossible to explain action that iscontrary to such judgment. This paper examines the question of how such explanation would be possible. After excluding accounts that either eliminate incontinence or render it inexplicable, I argue that genuine incontinence would require three components: first, a distinction between the types of judgments simultaneously present in the agent; second, the Aristotelian idea that not all of those types of judgments can be directly action-guiding; and third, that the judgments that are action-guiding can be pre-conceptual perceptions. I then use elements of Collingwood's aesthetics to make the case that although such pre-conceptual perceptions would not be propositional judgments and the relationship between them and the behaviors of the agent could not be causal, those behaviors could still qualify as incontinent actions.     

Negative results on a reported facial expression of contempt

Ekman and Friesen (1986) claimed to have discovered a facial expression, a unilateral lip curl, universally recognized as conveying contempt. Their conclusion was based on a series of labeling studies, all of which relied on one response measure—subjects choosing one label from a small, preselected list. This article reports two studies on the question of whether their result can be replicated with other response measures. In one study, subjects were allowed to respond with any emotion label they wanted; in the second, subjects were asked to make quantitative ratings on six emotion scales. Neither method suggested contempt as subjects' interpretation of the unilateral lip curl.This study was funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I thank Dee-Ann Matsugu, Lara Weick, and Lisa Wong for their careful work on this study.     

The accessibility of the term “contempt” and the meaning of the unilateral lip curl

Four studies are reported investigating the conditions under which various proposed facial expressions of contempt are labelled “contempt”. Only under forced-choice conditions are any of these expressions labelled “contempt” above chance; free responses are at or below chance. Contrary to predictions from Rosenberg and Ekman's (1995) explanation of poor free-response performance, participants demonstrating the best understanding of “contempt”, and those primed by prior tasks to have the concept readily accessible did not do better than other subjects. Using the forced-choice paradigm, supposedly neutral expressions were labelled “contempt” by 70% of respondents. It is concluded that poor performance in free-response studies is not due to inaccessibility or unfamiliarity of “contempt”, that the unilateral lip curl included in the JACFEE set of expressions of basic emotions (Matsumoto & Ekman, 1988) is not decoded as contempt, and that good performance in forced-choice studies results from artifacts of the method.     

Joint Commitments

I question the adequacy of Margaret Gilbert's account of collectivefeelings of guilt as collective judgments which do not necessarilyhave any phenomenological components. I question whether joint commitment theory in its present form helps us to understand orresolve social conflicts.