P2-31: In-Group Advantage in Negative Facial Expressions

To perceive facial expressions is suggested to be universal. However, studies have shown the in-group advantage (IGA) in recognition of facial expressions (e.g., Matsumoto, 1989, 1992) which is that people understand emotions more accurately when these emotions are expressed by members of their own culture group. A balanced design was used to investigate whether this IGA was showed in Western people and as well as in Asian people (Taiwanese). An emotional identification task was adopted to ask participants to identify positive (happy) and negative (sadness, fear, and anger) faces among Eastern and Western faces. We used Eastern faces from the Taiwanese Facial Expression Image Database (Chen, 2007) and Western faces from Ekman & Frisen (1979). Both reaction times and accuracies of performance were measured. Results showed that even all participants can identify positive and negative faces accurately; Asia participants responded significantly faster to negative Eastern faces than to negative Western faces. The similar IGA effect was also shown in Western participants. However, no such culture difference was found to positive faces. The results revealed the in-group advantage of the perception of facial expressions was specific to negative emotions and question the universality of perceiving facial expressions