Emotions are universally recognized from facial expressions—or so it has been claimed. To support that claim, research has been carried out in various modern cultures and in cultures relatively isolated from Western influence. A review of the methods used in that research raises questions of its ecological, convergent, and internal validity. Forced-choice response format, within-subject design, preselected photographs of posed facial expressions, and other features of method are each problematic. When they are altered, less supportive or nonsupportive results occur. When they are combined, these method factors may help to shape the results. Facial expressions and emotion labels are probably associated, but the association may vary with culture and is loose enough to be consistent with various alternative accounts, 8 of which are discussed. "Everyone knows that grief involves a gloomy and joy a cheerful countenance.... There are characteristic facial expressions which are observed to accompany anger, fear, erotic excitement, and all the other passions " (Aristotle, nd/1913, pp. 805, 808). Aristotle was not proposing a new idea but was cataloging what was known on the topic of physiognomy. The theory was that a person's physical appearance, especially in the face, reveals deeper characteristics: Poor proportions reveal a rogue, soft hair a coward, and a smile a happy person.' Today, few psychologists share Aristotle's belief about the meaning of poor proportions or soft hair, but many share his beliefs about facial expression and emotion. Oatley and Jenkins (1992) observed, "By far the most extensive body of data in the field of human emotions is that on facial expressions of emotion" (p. 67). Recent reviews of those data (see Table 1) agree that the face reveals emotion in a way that is universally understood: Happiness, surprise, fear, anger, contempt, disgust, and sadness—these seven emotions, plus or minus two, are recognized from facial expressions by all human beings, regardless of their cultural background.

This article opens by noting that positive emotions do not fit existing models of emotions. Consequently, a new model is advanced to describe the form and function of a subset of positive emotions, including joy, interest, contentment, and love. This new model posits that these positive emotions serve to broaden an individual's momentary thought-action repertoire, which in turn has the effect of building that individual's physical, intellectual, and social resources. Empirical evidence to support this broaden-and-build model of positive emotions is reviewed, and implications for emotion regulation and health promotion are discussed. Even though research on emotions has this new perspective are featured. My hope is flourished in recent years, investigations that that this article will unlock scientific curiosity expressly target positive emotions remain few about positive emotions, not only to test the and far between. Any review of the psychologi- ideas presented here, but also to build other new cal literature on emotions will show that models that might illuminate the nature and psychologists have typically favored negative value of positive emotions. Psychology sorely emotions in theory building and hypothesis needs more studies on positive emotions, not testing. In so doing, psychologists have inadver- simply to level the uneven knowledge bases tently marginalized the emotions, such as joy, between negative and positive emotions, but interest, contentment, and love, that share a more critically, to guide applications and pleasant subjective feel. To date, then, psycholo- interventions that might improve individual and gy's knowledge base regarding positive emo- collective functioning, psychological welltions is so thin that satisfying answers to the question "What good are positive emotions?" have yet to be articulated. This is unfortunate. being, and physical health. Experiences of positive emotion are central to Why Have Positive Emotions human nature and contribute richly to the quality of people's lives (Diener & Larsen, Been Marginalized? 1993; Myers & Diener, 1995). But how? In At this point, it might be useful to inspect

A meta-analysis examined emotion recognition within and across cultures. Emotions were universally recognized at better-than-chance levels. Accuracy was higher when emotions were both expressed and recognized by members of the same national, ethnic, or regional group, suggesting an in-group advantage. This advantage was smaller for cultural groups with greater exposure to one another, measured in terms of living in the same nation, physical proximity, and telephone communication. Majority group members were poorer at judging minority group members than the reverse. Cross-cultural accuracy was lower in studies that used a balanced research design, and higher in studies that used imitation rather than posed or spontaneous emotional expressions. Attributes of study design appeared not to moderate the size of the in-group advantage. Psychologists have long debated whether emotions are universal versus whether they vary by culture. These issues have been extensively summarized elsewhere and we do not reiterate them

The arousal dimension of human emotions is assessed from two different physiological sources: peripheral signals and electroencephalographic (EEG) signals from the brain. A complete acquisition protocol is presented to build a physiological emotional database for real participants. Arousal assessment is then formulated as a classification problem, with classes corresponding to 2 or 3 degrees of arousal. The performance of 2 classifiers has been evaluated, on peripheral signals, on EEG's, and on both. Results confirm the possibility of using EEG's to assess the arousal component of emotion, and the interest of multimodal fusion between EEG's and peripheral physiological signals. 1.

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ABSTRACT The “Easterlin paradox ” suggests that there is no link between a society’s economic development and its average level of happiness. We reassess this paradox, analyzing multiple rich datasets spanning many decades. Using recent data on a broader array of countries, we establish a clear positive link between average levels of subjective well-being and GDP per capita across countries, and find no evidence of a satiation point beyond which wealthier countries have no further increases in subjective well-being. We show that the estimated relationship is consistent across many datasets and is similar to that between subjective well-being and income observed within countries. Finally, examining the relationship between changes in subjective well-being and income over time within countries, we find economic growth associated with rising happiness. Together these findings indicate a clear role for absolute income and a more limited role for relative income comparisons in determining happiness. E

Two studies provide evidence for the role of cultural familiarity in recognizing facial expressions of emotion. For Chinese located in China and the United States, Chinese Americans, and non-Asian Americans, accuracy and speed in judging Chinese and American emotions was greater with greater participant exposure to the group posing the expressions. Likewise, Tibetans residing in China and Africans residing in the United States were faster and more accurate when judging emotions expressed by host versus nonhost society members. These effects extended across generations of Chinese Americans, seemingly independent of ethnic or biological ties. Results suggest that the universal affect system governing emotional expression may be characterized by subtle differences in style across cultures, which become more familiar with greater cultural contact. The individual who moves from one class to another or from one society to another is faced with the challenge of learning new “dialects” of facial language to supplement his knowledge of the more universal grammar of emotion. (Tomkins & McCarter, 1964, p. 127) To what extent is the recognition of emotion universal versus variable by culture? Researchers in psychology have spent decades in pursuit of this question. Extreme positions taken by early theorists have gradually given way to recent interactionist perspectives integrating evidence for both universality and cultural

Abstract—We report evidence for nonverbal “accents, ” subtle differences in the appearance of facial expressions of emotion across cultures. Participants viewed photographs of Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans in which posers ’ muscle movements were standardized to eliminate differences in expressions, cultural or otherwise. Participants guessed the nationality of posers displaying emotional expressions at above-chance levels, and with greater accuracy than they judged the nationality of the same posers displaying neutral expressions. These findings indicate that facial expressions of emotion can contain nonverbal accents that identify the expresser’s nationality or culture. Cultural differences are intensified during the act of expressing emotion, rather than residing only in facial features or other static elements of appearance. This evidence suggests that extreme positions regarding the universality of emotional expressions are incomplete. Do facial expressions of emotion constitute a universal “language,” or are there unique ways of expressing emotions within different cultures? This question has become a running debate among psychologists

This study investigates effectiveness of a local high-fidelity 3D facial avatar for a global audience by observing how US and International student groups differed in identifying subjects and perceiving emotions while viewing nonverbal high-fidelity 3D facial avatar animations embedded with the motion data of three US individuals. To synthesize the animated 3D avatars to convey highly believable facial expressions, a 3D scanned facial model was mapped with high-fidelity motioncapture data of three native US subjects as they spoke designated English sentences with specified emotions. Simple animations in conjunction with actual footage of the subjects speaking during the facial motion-capture sessions were shown several times to both native US and international students in similar settings. After a familiarization process, we showed the students randomly arranged talking avatars without voices and asked them to identify the corresponding identities and emotional types of the subjects whose facial expressions were utilized in the creation of the avatars, and to rate their confidence in their selections. We found that the US group had higher success rates in subject identification, although the related difference in confidence ratings between two groups was not significant. The differences in the success rates and confidence ratings on the perception of emotion between the two groups were not significant either. The results of our

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