9 - INTRODUCTION: CROSS-CULTURAL STUDIES OF FACIAL EXPRESSIONS OF EMOTIONS

Abstract

This chapter presents an overview of the saptiotemporal developments in cross cultural studies conducted for facial expressions of emotions. Classical Emotions View of facial expressions espoused that fundamental emotions correspond with genetically controlled prototype faces and derived chiefly from early cross-cultural comparative data of traditionally considered facial expressions of emotion. Well-published data on cross-cultural studies propelled the claims of universality of facial expressions. Margaret Mead and Bronislaw Malinowski both had challenged universality with counterintuitive findings about psychosexual development in non-Western cultures. Cultural relativism movement saw language as the determinant cognitive categories, and cultures would, therefore, be as different as their languages. Relativism extended to human facial expressions, which were considered linguistic and, by implication, just as culturally variable as language. Brown (1991) successfully overturned relativist dogma through his examination of relativism and the pro-universalism resurgence of the 1960s. Cross-cultural studies of human facial expressions were, thus, part of the counterreaction to the prevailing relativism. They were designed explicitly to provide evidence for universality, and, thus, their a priori limitations were not considered sufficiently.