Cultural Differences in Perception

       Face in Crowd Perception                                                     

These study were conducted by Gernot Horstmann and his colleagues at Bielefeld Univerversity, Germany. They asked their subjects to look into a crowed of neutral faces and find a happy or sad face. They then measured how long it took them to find the face. They found that when the emotion was shown with a closed mouth, it took the participants longer to find and when it was signaled with and open mouth, they found it quicker. This experiement disproves the previous thought that people can spot an angry face faster, but rather when teeth are visible. 

Info take from: A Toothy Grin or Angry Snarl Makes It Easy to Stand out in a Crowd: Visible Teeth Are Key

Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120614182554.htm

Facial Expressions Across Cultures

This study was conducted by Rachel E. Jack of The University of Glasgow. What she did was record the different eye movements of 13 Western Caucasians and 13 East Asians while the looked at pictures with emotionally expressive faces. They would have to put the faces into different categories: Happy, Sad, surprised, fearful, disgusted, angry or neutral. These faces were designed to be standardized "such that each expression displayed a specific combination of facial muscles typically associated with each feeling of emotion" (Cell Press). What they found was that Asians mostly looked at the eyes, almost ignoring the mouth, and determined the expression from there, while Caucasians looked at the whole face to determine the emotion. Its important to understand the different way in which cultures understand emotions in our broadening world with many different diverse people. 

Info Taken from: Perception of Facial Expressions Differs Across Cultures

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110901105510.htm