http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1h3Ypm/www.brainmysteries.com/research/Recognition_of_facial_expressions_is_not_universal.asp
While we were talking about memory and recalling memories from a crime I began thinking about how people tend to remember facial features differently. This lead me to the question of how do different races affect the recognition of facial expressions? Do people of different races really notice different facial features on a perpetrator that may lead them to the conviction of an innocent person?
I stumbled upon this article that discusses the recognition of facial expressions between Caucasians and Asians. Research showed that both races looked at different facial features when examining facial expressions. Caucasians tend to look at the shape of the eyes and mouth, while Asians tend to focus only on the shape of the nose. This article gives an insight on what features people focus on when looking at a person. I believe this will definitely impact their judgment on who committed a crime when looking at a lineup of suspects.
While we were talking about memory and recalling memories from a crime I began thinking about how people tend to remember facial features differently. This lead me to the question of how do different races affect the recognition of facial expressions? Do people of different races really notice different facial features on a perpetrator that may lead them to the conviction of an innocent person?
I stumbled upon this article that discusses the recognition of facial expressions between Caucasians and Asians. Research showed that both races looked at different facial features when examining facial expressions. Caucasians tend to look at the shape of the eyes and mouth, while Asians tend to focus only on the shape of the nose. This article gives an insight on what features people focus on when looking at a person. I believe this will definitely impact their judgment on who committed a crime when looking at a lineup of suspects.
I was actually going to post something about this until I realized that it had already been posted. Here is what I was going to post:
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I ran across this information while browsing online and thought it was interesting. Caroline Blais, a PhD student, recently published a study showing that Caucasians and Asians view faces differently. While Caucasians tend to view study faces by breaking them down into its features (eyes, nose, etc.) while Asians view them more holistically. This is contrary to previous findings which thought that when studying faces, we broke them down into its features, but this research is bias because it mainly tested Caucasians.
Blais came to this conclusion by showing the participants 112 Caucasian and Asian faces and asking them to name the trait they found to be dominant. The study confirmed that Caucasians view faces triangularly (both eyes and mouth - see this image for clarification: http://www.brainmysteries.com/Images/858161568.jpg) while Asians tended to fixate on the individuals' noses.
This finding led Blais to another experiment where she tested the participants on their ability to recognize one emotions by looking at faces. She found that Asians had a more difficult time distinguishing between negative emotions because they do not tend to look at the mouths of the individuals which often times give hints to emotions. For more information about the cultural difference in spotting emotions, refer to this website: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090813142131.htm
What does all of this mean? Maybe it will spark new research and eventually lead to different ways of questioning witnesses about who they saw at the crime scene based on their cultural background. It'll be interesting to see if these findings have any impact on the future of the law!
(These findings were recently published in Current Biology and in PLoS One. I haven't been able to find these articles, so if anyone find them, please share!)
I actually had a post ready for this same thing until I realized it had already been posted. I tried to copy what I had written here, but it disappeared!
Anyway, I thought that this was pretty interesting. This site also talks about how Asians have a more difficult time determining emotions since they do not look to one's mouth which is a great indicator of emotion. For more about this, look at this website: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090813142131.htm
My main question after reading this was how this finding was going to affect the law. Will it lead law enforcers to questions eyewitness differently based on their race? It also makes me wonder how reliable Asian witnesses are. Obviously, any information witnesses can give about a crime is beneficial, but what happens when you have two conflicting descriptions of the perpetrator, one from an Asian and the other from a Caucasian? Who would you believe - the race that views faces more entirely and accurately, or the race that partially views a face with less accuracy? I think this finding is very interesting and may impact things in the future.