Placing The Face In Context

A study titled “Placing the Face in Context: Cultural Differences in the Perception of Facial Emotion” by researchers Takahiko Masuda, Phoebe C. Ellsworth, Batja Mesquita, Janxin Leu, Shigehito Tanida, and Ellen Van de Veerdonk, tested the contextual sensitivity of Americans and Japanese. The researchers described westerners as being more analytic in regard to their perceptions of the things around them, and described the Japanese as being more holistic, meaning they perceive things in regard to their relationship with the person, object, or event they are observing (Masuda et al., P. 1). Furthermore, “expression of strong emotion is discouraged, [in japan] and suppression of individual emotions by adapting one’s expression to the atmosphere of the group is regarded as mature and appropriate” (Masuda et al., P. 3). Therefore, the researchers
5). All emotions were simplistic, consisting of either sad, happy, or angry faces (Masuda et al., P. 6). In addition, the eye movements of all participants were tracked to observe how attentive each participant was to the backdrop characters. To perform this study, participants were asked to rest there chin on a platform in front of a computer screen to regulate distance. The participants were then told to rate the emotion of the main character shown on the screen on a ten-point scale. When the first part of the study was complete, participants were then asked to identify whether they had previously seen a particular character by pressing yes or no. To finish up, the participants were then asked whether they noticed the background characters and whether these characters influenced there rating of the main character’s emotion (Masuda et al., P.