American-Japanese cultural differences in judgements of emotional expressions of different intensities

Abstract

Although research has generated a wealth of information on cultural influences on emotion judgements, the information we have to date is limited in several ways. This study extends this literature in two ways, first by obtaining judgements from people in two cultures of expressions portrayed at different intensity levels, and second by incorporating individual level measures of culture to examine their contribution to observed differences. When judging emotion categories in low intensity expressions, American and Japanese judges see the emotion intended at above-chance rates, albeit lower than when judging high intensity faces. Also, American and Japanese intensity ratings of external displays and internal experiences differ dramatically for low intensity expressions compared to high intensity faces. Finally, the two cultural dimensions measured in this study—individualism versus collectivism (IC) and status differentiation (SD)—accounted for almost all of the variance in the observed differences. These findings are discussed in terms of their underlying possible mechanisms, and future research possibilities.