Interpretation of Faces: A Cross-cultural Study of a Prediction from Fridlund's Theory

Abstract

From his Behavioural Ecology perspective, Fridlund (1994) theorised that facial expressions evolved to convey social intents and contingencies, yet offered no evidence that observers interpret faces in this way. Canadian, Chinese, and Japanese respondents were shown standard '“facial expressions of emotion'” and asked to select one of Fridlund's predicted social messages. For comparison, an independent group of respondents selected among the emotion messages predicted by Ekman and Friesen (1976). N o significant difference in the amount of agreement was found between social and emotion conditions, both across three cultures and within each culture. Faces convey social messages with about as much consensus as they convey emotional ones.