Faces

According to researchers at Glasgow University, Asians and Westerners "decode" facial expressions differently. Westerners pay equal attention to mouth and eyes, while Easterners focus on the eyes.

26 college students (British, Japanese and Chinese) looked at photographs of faces and identified the emotional expressions they observed. The East Asian volunteers were more likely to mistake expressions of fear and disgust for surprise and anger, respectively. These expressions are mostly differentiated by the muscles around the mouth.

In another study a few years back, a Japanese researcher showed some Photoshopped faces to Japanese and American volunteers. The Americans were more likely to get it wrong when a happy mouth was grafted onto a sad face.

When I studied Chinese last November I had to learn the adjectives "happy", "hungry", "busy" and "tired", then match them up with these pictures:










Tired I got, but I really didn't know what to do with the other three. My Taiwanese tutor maintained that 1 was hungry, 2 was happy and 4 was busy. I remain unconvinced.