The Japanese Read Your Feelings in Your Eyes, the Americans by Your Mouth

The culture we belong to dictates each and every of our gestures. Also, a real cultural abyss has been revealed in the way we appreciate facial expressions amongst cultures. "For instance, in Japan, people tend to look to the eyes for emotional cues, whereas Americans tend to look to the mouth," said researcher Masaki Yuki, a behavioral scientist at Hokkaido University in Japan.

"This could be because the Japanese, when in the presence of others, try to suppress their emotions more than Americans do. In any case, the eyes are more difficult to control than the mouth, so they probably provide better clues about a person's emotional state even if he or she is trying to hide it", explained Yuki.

Since his childhood, Yuki was puzzled by pictures of American stars. "Their smiles looked strange to me," Yuki told LiveScience. "They opened their mouths too widely, and raised the corners of their mouths in an exaggerated way."

"Japanese people tend to shy away from overt displays of emotion, and rarely smile or frown with their mouths, because the Japanese culture tends to emphasize conformity, humbleness and emotional suppression, traits that are thought to promote better relationships", Yuki explained.

That's why the emoticons he received in e-mail messages from American Scholars were weird for him: smiley faces :) and sad faces, or :(. Japanese emoticons, of course, stress the eyes: the happy face (^_^) and the sad face (;_;).

That's why Yuki's team formed groups of American and Japanese students to assess the emotional state of computer-generated emoticons.

Indeed, the Japanese focused on the emoticons' eyes while the Americans on their mouths. The Americans perceived smiling emoticons connected to sad-looking eyes as happier than the Japanese regarded them.

Then the team manipulated images of real faces. This time, too, the Japanese subjects focused more on the eyes while the Americans on the mouth. But in this case, both the Americans and the Japanese perceived "happy" eyes as neutral or sad. "This could be because the muscles that are flexed around the eyes in genuine smiles are also quite active in sadness," said James Coan, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, not involved in the research.

"Research has shown that the expressive muscles around the eyes provide key clues about a person's genuine emotions," said Coan.

As Japanese appreciate a person's feelings by his/her eyes, it could be harder to hide your true sentiments from them. But "Would you really want to know if your friend's, lover's, or boss's smile was not genuine? In some contexts, especially in the United States, maybe it is better not to know", Yuki pointed out.