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.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
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.
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.
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.
References
Abramson, L., Marom, I., Petranker, R., & Aviezer, H. (2017). Is fear in your head? A comparison of instructed and real-life expressions of emotion in the face and body. Emotion, 17(3), 557–565.
Atkinson, A. P., Dittrich, W. H., Gemmell, A. J., & Young, A. W. (2004). Emotion perception from dynamic and static body expressions in point-light and full-light displays. Perception, 33(6), 717–746.
Aviezer, H., Trope, Y., & Todorov, A. (2012). Body cues, not facial expressions, discriminate between intense positive and negative emotions. Science, 338(6111), 1225–1229.
Carver, C. S., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2009). Anger is an approach-related affect: Evidence and implications. Psychological Bulletin, 135(2), 183–204.
Coulson, M. (2004). Attributing emotion to static body postures: Recognition accuracy, confusions, and viewpoint dependence. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 28(2), 117–139.
Crivelli, C., Jarillo, S., Russell, J. A., & Fernández-Dols, J. M. (2016). Reading emotions from faces in two indigenous societies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145(7), 830–843.
Dael, N., Mortillaro, M., & Scherer, K. R. (2012). Emotion expression in body action and posture. Emotion, 12(5), 1085–1101.
Darwin, C. (1998). The expression of the emotions in man and animals. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1872)
De Gelder, B. (2009). Why bodies? Twelve reasons for including bodily expressions in affective neuroscience. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society b: Biological Sciences, 364(1535), 3475–3484.
De Gelder, B., & Van den Stock, J. (2011). The Bodily Expressive Action Stimulus Test (BEAST). Construction and validation of a stimulus basis for measuring perception of whole body expression of emotions. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 181–187.
DiGirolamo, M. A., & Russell, J. A. (2016). The emotion seen in a face can be a methodological artifact: The process of elimination hypothesis. Emotion (washington, DC), 17(3), 538–546.
Ekman, P. (1972). Universals and cultural differences in facial expressions of emotions. In J. Cole (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation, 1971 (pp. 207–283). University of Nebraska Press.
Ekman, P. (1994). Strong evidence for universals in facial expressions: a reply to Russell’s mistaken critique. Psychological Bulletin, 115, 268–287.
Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1967). Head and body cues in the judgment of emotion: A reformulation. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 24(3 PT 1), 711–724.
Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1971). Constants across cultures in the face and emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 17(2), 124–129.
Ekman, P., Sorenson, E. R., & Friesen, W. V. (1969). Pan-cultural elements in facial displays of emotion. Science, 164(3875), 86–88.
Elfenbein, H. A., & Ambady, N. (2002). On the universality and cultural specificity of emotion recognition: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 128(2), 203–235.
Hager, J. C., & Ekman, P. (1979). Long-distance of transmission of facial affect signals. Ethology and Sociobiology, 1(1), 77–82.
Haidt, J., & Keltner, D. (1999). Culture and facial expression: Open-ended methods find more expressions and a gradient of recognition. Cognition & Emotion, 13(3), 225–266.
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). Most people are not WEIRD. Nature, 466(7302), 29–29.
Hubbard, J. A., Smithmyer, C. M., Ramsden, S. R., Parker, E. H., Flanagan, K. D., Dearing, K. F., ... & Simons, R. F. (2002). Observational, physiological, and self–report measures of children’s anger: Relations to reactive versus proactive aggression. Child Development, 73(4), 1101–1118.
James, W. T. (1932). A study of the expression of bodily posture. The Journal of General Psychology, 7(2), 405–437.
Koster, J. (2018). Family ties: The multilevel effects of households and kinship on the networks of individuals. Royal Society Open Science, 5(4), 172159.
Koster, J. M., Grote, M. N., & Winterhalder, B. (2013). Effects on household labor of temporary out-migration by male household heads in Nicaragua and Peru: An analysis of spot-check time allocation data using mixed-effects models. Human Ecology, 41(2), 221–237.
Lopez, L. D., Reschke, P. J., Knothe, J. M., & Walle, E. A. (2017). Postural communication of emotion: Perception of distinct poses of five discrete emotions. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 710–721.
Ma, Y., Chen, X., Ran, G., Ma, H., Zhang, X., & Liu, G. (2017). The processing of body expressions during emotional scenes: The modulation role of attachment styles. Scientific Reports, 7, 44740.
Nelson, N. L., & Russell, J. A. (2011). Preschoolers’ use of dynamic facial, bodily, and vocal cues to emotion. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 110(1), 52–61.
Norenzayan, A., & Heine, S. J. (2005). Psychological universals: What are they and how can we know? Psychological Bulletin, 131(5), 763–784.
Parkinson, C., Walker, T. T., Memmi, S., & Wheatley, T. (2017). Emotions are understood from biological motion across remote cultures. Emotion, 17(3), 459–477.
Russell, J. A. (1995). Facial expressions of emotion: What lies beyond minimal universality? Psychological Bulletin, 118(3), 379–391.
Russell, J. A., & Barrett, L. F. (1999). Core affect, prototypical emotional episodes, and other things called emotion: Dissecting the elephant. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(5), 805–819.
Sauter, D. A., Eisner, F., Ekman, P., & Scott, S. K. (2010). Cross-cultural recognition of basic emotions through nonverbal emotional vocalizations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(6), 2408–2412.
Sogon, S., & Masutani, M. (1989). Identification of emotion from body movements: A cross-cultural study of Americans and Japanese. Psychological Reports, 65(1), 35–46.
Sorenson, E. R. (2011). Culture and the expression of emotion. In Psychological anthropology (pp. 361–372). De Gruyter Mouton.
Tottenham, N., Tanaka, J. W., Leon, A. C., McCarry, T., Nurse, M., Hare, T. A., ... & Nelson, C. (2009). The NimStim set of facial expressions: Judgments from untrained research participants. Psychiatry Research, 168(3), 242–249.
Tracy, J. L., & Robins, R. W. (2008). The nonverbal expression of pride: Evidence for cross-cultural recognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(3), 516–530.
Wallbott, H. G. (1998). Bodily expression of emotion. European Journal of Social Psychology, 28(6), 879–896.
Wallbott, H. G., & Scherer, K. R. (1986). Cues and channels in emotion recognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(4), 690–699.
Wehrle, T., Kaiser, S., Schmidt, S., & Scherer, K. R. (2000). Studying the dynamics of emotional expression using synthesized facial muscle movements. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(1), 105–119.
Winking, J., Eastwick, P. W., Smith, L. K., & Koster, J. (2018). Applicability of the Investment Model Scale in a natural-fertility population. Personal Relationships, 25(4), 497–516.
Witkower, Z., & Tracy, J. L. (2019). Bodily communication of emotion: Evidence for extrafacial behavioral expressions and available coding systems. Emotion Review, 11(2), 184–193.
Witkower, Z., Tracy, J.L., Pun, A., & Baron, A. (2020). Can children recognize bodily expressions of emotion? Manuscript in preparation.
Witkower, Z., Tracy, J. L., Pun, A., & Baron, A. S. (2021). Can children recognize bodily expressions of emotion? Journal of Nonverbal Behavior. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10919-021-00368-0#citeas.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
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.
Additional information
Handling Editor: Disa Sauter
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
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
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-021-00052-y