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.