北京市中考模拟考试试题(7)
Rachael Jack, University of Glasgow researcher, said that rather than scanning evenly (均匀的) across a face as Westerners do, Easterners fix their attention on the eyes.
“We show that Easterners and We sterners look at different face features to read facial expressions,” Jack said. “Westerners not only look at the eyes, but also the mouth, but Easterners prefer the eyes and don’t look at the mouth very often.”
According to Jack and his coworkers, the discovery shows that human communication of emotion is more difficult to understand than what was believed before. As a result, facial expressions that had been considered commonly understandable cannot be completely used to convey（传递）emotion in cross-cultural situations.
The researchers studied cultural differences in the understanding of facial expressions b y recording the eye movements of 13 Western Caucasian and 13 East Asian people while they observed pictures of expressive faces and put them into different categories: happy, sad, surprised, fearful, angry, or dissatisfied. They compared how correctly people who took part in the research read those facial expressions by using their eye movements.
It turned out that Easterners focused much greater attention on the eyes and made more mistakes than Westerners did. “The cultural difference in eye movements that they show is probably a reflection（反射）of cultural difference in facial expressions,” Jack said. “Our research suggests that while Westerners use the whole face to convey emotion, Easterners use the eyes more and mouth less.”
In short, the research shows that facial expressions are not universal messages of human emotion. From here on, examining how cult ural factors have diversified（使多样化）these basic social skills will help our understanding of human emotion. If not, when it comes to communicating emotions across cultures, Easterners and Westerners will find themselves lost in translation.
