Social Engineering Blogs

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Cultural Gestures and Verbal Cues

Many gestures may be universal, but are associated verbal cues translatable?

Last week’s Olympics blog discussed the universal gesture of triumph and touched on Humintell’s research into the universal nature of many gestures. However, just knowing that many gestures are universal is not enough to effectively read people. Instead, it is important to connect them to verbal messages.

This is exactly what Humintell’s Dr. David Matsumoto and Dr. Hyi Sung Hwang attempted to do in a 2013 study. This research catalogued various gestures, including both culturally similar ones as well as gestures that vary drastically between cultures.

They asked participants from all over the world to list out gestures based on a comprehensive list of possible verbal messages. These gestures were then shown to participants from the same region in order to maintain validity in the experiment. This process allowed Drs. Matsumoto and Hwang to determine which gestures were recognizable as the verbal cue in question.

Interestingly, they found that universal and varying gestures tended to convey categorically different emotions. While many culturally-specific gestures had complex associated messages, universal gestures tended to convey pretty elemental or basic emotions.

Still, they did notice differences. Some verbal messages, such as an insulting one, occurred in every culture but with different associated gestures. Other gestures occurred universally but with different meanings, including the “A-Ok” symbol in Western cultures which conveyed a variety of meanings, including a reference to “money.”

Finally, there were some gestures which were culturally specific and who’s verbal message existed nowhere else. For instance, the gesture for “apology” only occurred in South Asia, and the signal for “hunger” was not present outside of East Asia. No other regions used these gestures or used gestures to convey these concepts.

This sort of research is critically important for those of us who want to better read people. Many gestures convey verbal messages, clarify speech, or amplify certain meanings, all of which add nuance to complex social interactions.

If we simply exclude gestures from communication, we miss a whole sphere of human interaction. Moreover, when trying to interact across cultures, especially if we do not speak a common language, a focus on universal gestures can go a long way towards bridging otherwise intractable differences.

The trick, of course, is knowing which gestures mean the same thing in different cultures. While this blog tries to help you build this knowledge, it can only do so much. Instead, we encourage you to take advantage of Humintell’s specialized cross-cultural training programs to make you a better people reader, regardless of where in the world you happen to be.

Universal Olympian Triumph

The Olympics are also an incredible insight into the universality of emotional expressions.

In addition to being an amazing showcase of emotions, as we discussed last week, the Olympics also demonstrate the unity of human emotions across cultures. Given that the Games bring athletes together from all over the world, they present a prime study in the differences and similarities between differents expressions of emotions.

Followers of this blog should be familiar with the phenomena of universal basic emotions but also with the reality that cultural differences do complicate the process of reading people. Gestures, eye contact, and social cues all vary, so we cannot rely on excellent people reading skills in one culture to replicate our abilities in other situations.

However, as Humintell’s Dr. David Matsumoto maintained in a radio interview last week, there are some emotions that span such cultural divides. One of these is the expression of triumph, which is so frequently showcased by Olympic victors.

As mentioned last week, Dr. Matsumoto’s research has found that, upon winning the gold, Olympic athletes almost invariably showcase the same emotion: triumph.

Interestingly, this is not traditionally included as a universal basic emotion, but all the same, Dr. Matsumoto found it again and again in pictures and videos of triumphant competitors. He noted: “When we studied pride, there was always something gnawing at me because some of the expressions that were previously labeled pride just didn’t make that much sense to me.”

Eventually, he and fellow Humintell researcher Dr. Hyi Sung Hwang labeled this emotion triumph, contending that “Triumph has its own signature expression that is immediate, automatic and universal across cultures.” Instead of the subtle, self-satisfied smile that marks pride, triumph is displayed in a jubilant, almost aggressive fashion.

In the aforementioned radio interview, Dr. Matsumoto pointed out that this emotion holds even in cultures where dominance and triumph are generally deemphasized in favor of humility, and it can be seen amongst non-human primates and even other animals as well. This all suggests a deep evolutionary and biological root behind the emotion of triumph, which we have also noted with other emotions.

Moreover, its manifestation is not just limited to a facial expression. Triumph is often accompanied by a sort of “victory stance,” with arms raised and head held up high. This holds for victors from all over the world, emphasizing past research that found similarities in gestures universally across cultures.

Last week we emphasized that the Olympics are a great time to focus on trying to read expressions, because they are particularly pronounced in both defeat and victory. But reading facial expressions is only one facet of successfully reading people. This week, we would like to encourage you to look at gestures. Can you note the features of a triumphant stance? Does anything else jump out at you?

The Length of a Microexpression

What exactly are microexpressions?

While we certainly know how important microexpressions are in reading other people, there are still a great deal of outstanding questions. One of these concerns the very nature of a microexpression: how long do they last? This is an important question in better understanding to what extent they are categorically different from normal expressions.

This was exactly what Dr. Xunbing Shen and his team sought to determine in a 2016 study. They suspected that the process of recognizing a short (less than 200 milliseconds) and a long (greater than 200 milliseconds) expression were distinctive neurological processes. Therefore, they hypothesized that this distinction was also what could distinguish microexpressions from normal, macroexpressions.

Importantly, the researchers employed an “affective priming paradigm,” which utilized a picture of a facial expression to prime an associated emotional word. This attempts to elicit distinctive brain responses when there is a mismatch between word and expression, in this case seeking to hold a microscope up to differing reactions to micro and macroexpressions.

In order to answer their hypothesis, Dr. Shen’s team compiled a small team of volunteers. These participants were shown a series of images showcasing 30 different expressions, displaying either fear, happiness, or a neutral expression, alongside a related series of 100 emotionally significant words.

The series of faces were paired with words, some of which matching the emotion expressed and some of which not. Moreover, the exposure to faces was varied from 40 to 300 milliseconds, in order to test the impact of fleeting microexpressions. During this process, brain scans recorded activity that occurred as participants attempted to identify the emotions expressed.

After completing the experiment, Dr. Shen and his team compared brain activity during both long and short duration expressions. They found significant differences, with the brain’s left hemisphere more active while perceiving microexpressions, for example.

While these results may seem strange, given that expressions are the same regardless of the duration. The study concludes by offering some possible explanations. Essentially, it takes more attention to perceive a shorter expression. This may be because mimicry is crucial to detecting expressions, and this is hard to do quickly. Instead, participants were forced to tap into their memory in hopes of identifying the expression that way.

There are certainly still some unanswered questions, but this work helps further distinguish the process of expression recognition. It is not just a matter of recognizing fleeting variants of normal expressions, as microexpression recognition is a wholly distinctive neurological process.

Naturally, Humintell is pretty excited at the multitude of directions that exist to study microexpressions. If you share this enthusiasm, check out some more information or consider enrolling in a relevant training class!