Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

D I V E R S I T Y
Do People in All Cultures Express 
Emotion Similarly?
 Module 
31 
Understanding Emotional Experiences 
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336 Chapter 
10 
Motivation and Emotion
with Caucasians before Ekman’s arrival. Yet their nonverbal 
responses to emotion-evoking stories, as well as their ability 
to identify basic emotions, were quite similar to those of 
Westerners. 
Being so isolated, the New Guineans could not have 
learned from Westerners to recognize or produce similar 
facial expressions. Instead, their similar abilities and manner 
of responding emotionally appear to have been present 
innately. Although one could argue that similar experiences 
in both cultures led the members of each one to learn similar 
types of nonverbal behavior, this appears unlikely because 
the two cultures are so very different. The expression of basic 
emotions, thus, seems to be universal (Ekman, 1994b; Izard, 
1994; Matsumoto, 2002). 
Why do people across cultures express emotions similarly? 
A hypothesis known as the
facial-affect program
gives one 
explanation. The facial-affect program—which is assumed to 
be universally present at birth—is analogous to a computer 
program that is turned on when a particular emotion is 
experienced. When set in motion, the “program” activates a 
set of nerve impulses that make the face display an appropriate 
expression. Each primary emotion produces a unique set of 
muscular movements, forming the kinds of expressions shown in Figure 4. For example, 
the emotion of happiness is universally displayed by movement of the zygomatic major, 
a muscle that raises the corners of the mouth and form what we would call a smile 
(Ekman, 2003; Kohler et al., 2004; Kim, Kim, & Kim, 2007; Kendler et al., 2008).
The importance of facial expressions is illustrated by an intriguing notion known as 
the