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Is There an Ingroup Advantage in Recognizing Spontaneously Expressed Emotions?

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Abstract

Evidence for the ingroup advantage hypothesis in recognizing emotions comes from studies using specific types of posed expressions. A proposed source of this advantage has been culturally-specific ways of expressing emotions, known as cultural dialects (Elfenbein et al. Emotion 7(1):131–146, 2007). But to date, no study has used spontaneously produced expressions as stimuli in testing the hypothesis. We do so here. American and Japanese observers judged expressions produced by American and Japanese athletes immediately at the completion of a medal match from the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. The ingroup hypothesis was not supported, suggesting that it occurs when posers mime an expression, but not when they spontaneously produce it in real life.

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Notes

  1. These were non-equivalent expressions, that is, expressions that differed in the specific facial muscles that were innervated. Studies of posed, equivalent expressions do not support the ingroup hypothesis (Beaupré and Hess 2005; Biehl et al. 1997; Elfenbein and Ambady 2002a; Lee et al. 2005; Matsumoto 1990, 1992, 1993, 2002, 2007; Matsumoto and Ekman 1989; Matsumoto et al. 1999), including Elfenbein and colleagues’ (2007a) study described here. Even when American and Japanese observers are told that the Caucasian expressors in the JACFEE are Americans and the Asian expressors are Japanese, the ingroup effect does not occur with posed, equivalent expressions (Matsumoto 2007).

  2. Although expressions were available from the medal ceremonies, we opted not to include those because they occurred within a staged, public ceremony where athletes have had time to reflect on their performances and the results. Thus one would expect relatively greater influences of sociocultural demands on their expressions, relegating them as relatively less spontaneous. The expressions that occurred immediately at the conclusion of a medal match, however, while still in a public arena, are relatively more spontaneous. Given that the focus of this study was on spontaneous rather than posed expressions, it made more sense to study only those expressions at match completion.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Deborah Krupp and Jeff LeRoux for their comments on a previous version of this manuscript; and Patricia Gums, Katherine Sorenson, and Brie Pfisterer for their assistance in the general laboratory program. Preparation of this report was supported in part by research Contract W91WAW-08-C-0024 from the Army Research Institute.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA, 94132, USA

    David Matsumoto & Andres Olide

  2. The World of Judo, Bristol, UK

    Bob Willingham

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  1. David Matsumoto
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  2. Andres Olide
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Correspondence to David Matsumoto.

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Matsumoto, D., Olide, A. & Willingham, B. Is There an Ingroup Advantage in Recognizing Spontaneously Expressed Emotions?. J Nonverbal Behav 33, 181–191 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-009-0068-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-009-0068-z

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