A New Pan-Cultural Facial Expression of Emotion

Paper from Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen

Presented By,Ankit RankaOct 19, 2009

CS6998: Topics in Speech Processing: Computational Approaches to Emotional

Speech, Fall 2009

Topics

• Universal Expressions• Past and Present Views• Contempt Vs Disgust• Contempt – A Universal Expression ?

o Methodologyo Resultso Contempt and Related Emotiono Discussiono Open Questions

Universal Expressions

• Anger • Disgust (Same as Contempt ?)• Fear• Happiness• Sadness • Surprise

Past and Present Views

• The facial expression is determined totally by social factors? (Bridwhistell, 1970)

• Is it necessary to consider biological expressions? (Ekman, 1973)

• There is unique, highly recognizable, pan-cultural facial expression for six universal emotions.

Contempt Vs. Disgust

• Properties of Contempt –o It has not been observed in other primates.o Contempt one of the last emotion to appear (?)o Involves Unilateral facial actions.

• Disgust –o One of the Pan Cultural Emotion.o Involves only bilateral facial actions.

Contempt – A Universal Expression?

Methodology• Three different emotions –

1.Tightening and Slightly raising the corner of the lip unilaterally.

• The above expression bilaterally• Raising the entire lip slightly, without tightening

or raising the lip corners

• The pictures were scored with Ekman and Friesen’s Facial Acting Coding Systems.

• Subjects in each culture also saw other facial expressions (universal expressions) (why?)

• Judgments were obtained in 10 countries – 2 non-western, 8 western cultures.

• Emotion terms translated to native and again translated back to verify accurate translation.

Results

• Results for the six universal expression were same as the previous ones.

• Isolation of one expression that depicts contempt –o ANOVA was computed with one factor as

three contempt expressions.o The amount of variance accounted for by

cultures was small.o Unilateral lip corner raise and tightened was

judged 75% as contempt as compared to Bilateral.

Contempt and Related Emotion

• Subjects judge contempt as compared to some other expression more often or not?

• Compared Unilateral Contempt expression with anger and disgust expression (why anger?)

• A 3 X 10 ANOVA was computed• Expression with lip corner raised and

tightened unilaterally was judged contempt much more often.

Discussion

• Limitation –o All subjects were college studentso Less number of countrieso Not tested on less educated or those not

exposed to mass mediao Not tested on preliterate, completely visually

isolated subjects (feasible?)

Open questions

• Prior observations on contempt were wrong?

• Whether contempt evolved same as other emotions that have universal expressions?

• Contempt originated through specific constant learning?