1: Emotions Across Cultures

Ekman indicates that much of what he has written in this book was influenced by cross-cultural studies of facial expression in various locations around the globe. But then he admits that most of the content of the book is based on personal observations that "I have yet to have the time to prove through experiments." (EN: So be careful, as the book will be a blend of research and unfounded opinion.)

There follows an extended narcissistic ramble in which the author speaks of his own background and experience, largely predicated on slowly overcoming his premise that expression and gesture are culturally learned behaviors by finding that there are relatively few differences in the way that people express emotions across cultures.

Ultimately, it occurred to him that there is no single source of emotional expression because the behavior of people in social context is always a mix of truth and fiction. Some emotional expressions are genuine, and others are faked to create the impression of a culturally appropriate emotion upon others.

So natural expressions are suppressed or distorted and replaced with a culturally defined false expression, generally according to the "display rules" of a given culture. These rules dictate which emotions are considered appropriate in which situations - and when a person's natural emotional reaction is different to what is culturally appropriate, he masks his true feelings and displays the one required by his culture.

(EN: This makes good sense, but the author seems to overlook the role of deception in social interaction - in which emotions is neither genuine nor culturally dictated, but contrived to provoke a desired response in another person whom the expresser is attempting to deceive - or even to persuade of a truth that he expects the other party will not accept. So there are always multiple factors in play.)

He specifically mentions Japan, a culture whose cultural display rules are so strict as to demand the suppression of virtually all emotional expression. A "series of experiments" which showed surgical films to both American and Japanese subjects found that the initial emotional expression of disgust were identical, but the Japanese tended to mask their discomfort, generally with a tight smile.

He also addresses the problem of analysis: the researcher brings to any experiment his own cultural and personal beliefs about emotion - what he believes that the appropriate emotional reaction ought to be - and this becomes a perceptual filter that skews his interpretation. He is in effect seeking evidence for a foregone conclusion about the way another person ought to feel in a given situation.

There are details of various experiments and techniques that the author has used to attempt to overcome or at least diminish subjectivity and cultural biases - such as having people, rather than the researcher, interpret emotions in photographs of people from entirely different cultures - a great deal of filigree that adds little to what has already been said.