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Beyond Face Value: Evidence for the Universality of Bodily Expressions of Emotion

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Abstract

Research on emotion communication typically focuses on facial expressions, yet scientists dating back to Darwin have noted the importance of the body in conveying emotions. In fact, studies have found that the body is reliably used to express and recognize anger, fear, and sadness, by individuals in several industrialized populations. Here, we provide the first evidence that bodily expressions of these three emotions are reliably recognized by members of an isolated small-scale traditional society: the Mayangna of Nicaragua. Specifically, we found that recognition rates for sadness and anger bodily expressions were high, and recognition rates for a fear bodily expression were lower but still significantly greater than chance. Given that the Mayangna are unlikely to have learned these bodily expressions through cross-cultural transmission, their ability to recognize these displays provides strong evidence for the universality of each expression.

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Notes

  1. Roughly 15% of participants in this community identify as Miskito, rather than Mayangna. Given that the large majority identify as Mayangna, we refer to the sample as Mayangna.

  2. Although adding multi-word or full phrase definitions, instead of relying on single-word prompts, might have been helpful in ensuring accurate translations, the addition of contextualizing information can also result in culturally biased representations of each emotion, opening the door to a different set of limitations. However, it is possible that recognition rates would be different—and in all likelihood, higher—if more information was provided for each emotion; future studies are needed to probe this issue.

  3. Given that participants selected an image from a set of four in response to an emotion-word prompt, and did not select an emotion label from a list of options, the noted translation issue applies only to prompts, not to participants’ selections.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6K 1Z4, Canada

    Zachary Witkower & Jessica L. Tracy

  2. University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Alexander K. Hill

  3. University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Jeremy Koster

Authors
  1. Zachary Witkower
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  2. Alexander K. Hill
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  3. Jeremy Koster
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  4. Jessica L. Tracy
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Correspondence to Zachary Witkower.

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Funding

This work was supported by generous funding from a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant (No. 435-2018-0154).

Data Availability

All data and preregistration documents for this work can be found here:  https://osf.io/9hwxt.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethical Approval

The study was performed to ethical standards as laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki.

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Handling Editor: Disa Sauter

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Witkower, Z., Hill, A.K., Koster, J. et al. Beyond Face Value: Evidence for the Universality of Bodily Expressions of Emotion. Affec Sci 2, 221–229 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-021-00052-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-021-00052-y

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