A new pan-cultural facial expression of emotion

We obtained the first evidence of a facial expression unique to contempt. Contrary to our prediction, this contempt expression was not culture-specific but was recognized by people in Estonia S.S.R., Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Scotland, Turkey, the United States, and West Sumatra. Pan-cultural agreement about the contempt expression was as high as has been found previously for other emotions.We are grateful to our collaborators, Anthony Chan, Karl Heider, Rainer Krause, Rolf Kuschel, Ayhan LeCompte, Tom Pitcairn, Pio Ricci-Bitti, Klaus Scherer, Masatoshi Tomita, Athanase Tzavaras, Arnold Upmeyer, and Jaan Valsiner; to Maureen O'Sullivan for comments on this report. Paul Ekman's work is supported by a Research Scientist Award (MH 06092) from the National Institute of Mental Health.