Researchers from Northeastern University in the United States examined how the same facial expressions can signal different emotions across cultures. The findings, reported in Frontiers, suggest that cultural context can shape both perception and neural processing of emotional cues.
The study compared two groups: Chinese individuals born and raised in China who later relocated to the United States, and non-Hispanic white Americans who were born and raised in the United States. Participants viewed a sequence of photographs displaying faces with a range of emotions. In several trials, descriptive words such as anger or disgust accompanied the images to see how language might influence interpretation.
Brain activity was monitored with functional magnetic resonance imaging during the experiment. Among Chinese participants, when the word disgust was not presented before the image, reduced functional connectivity appeared in brain networks tied to semantic processing, visual perception, and social cognition. These patterns point to differences in how emotion concepts are linked to perceptual information across cultures. This observation aligns with broader work suggesting that language and culture help scaffold neural representations of social signals.
In contrast, American participants tended to interpret clear facial cues like a wrinkled nose and a furrowed brow as signs of disgust more readily, reflecting a tendency to map facial dynamics directly onto disgust concepts. The researchers note that when the word disgust was provided before the image, participants across both groups showed improved accuracy in recognizing the intended emotion, highlighting the powerful role of linguistic framing in emotion perception.
These results illuminate how even subtle cultural differences can steer neural processing related to emotion. They underscore the importance of considering both culture and language when studying facial expressions and social communication. The team hopes that continued work will deepen understanding of how cultural and linguistic factors influence emotion interpretation, with potential implications for creating more accurate AI facial analysis systems and culturally aware social robotics.
This line of inquiry complements prior research on trust and facial features, which has explored how certain expressions and features can influence judgments of others’ reliability. Together, such studies map a broader landscape where perception, language, and culture intersect to shape social cognition in diverse populations.
Experts emphasize that these findings should be interpreted with nuance. Cultural norms around emotional display, linguistic categories, and social context all contribute to how facial cues are processed. The research team advocates for more cross-cultural investigations, which could improve communication, reduce misinterpretations, and inform the design of AI systems that interpret facial expressions in a culturally sensitive manner.