Facial Expressiveness

            Facial expressions carry meaning that is determined by situations and relationships. For instance, in American culture the smile is typically an expression of pleasure. Yet it also has other functions. A woman’s smile at a police officer does not carry the same meaning as the smile she gives to a young child. A smile may show affection, convey politeness, or disguise true feelings. It also is a source of confusionn across cultures. For examples, many people in Russia consider smiling a strangers in public to be unusual and even suspicious behavior. Yet many Americans smile freely at stranger in public places (although this is loss common in big cities). Some Russians believe that Americans smile in the wrong places; some Americans believe that Russians don’t smile enough. In Southeast Asian cultures, a smile is frequently used to cover emotional pain or embarrassment. Vietnamese people may tell the sad story of how they had to leave their country but end the story with a smile.

            Our faces reveal emotions and attitudes, but we should not attempt to “read” people from another culture as we would “read” someone from our own cultures. The fact that members of one culture do not express their emotions as openly as do members of another does not mean that they do not experience emotions. Rather, there are cultural restraints on the amount of nonverbal expressiveness permitted. For example, in public and in formal situations many Japanese do not show their emotions as freely as Americans do. More privately and with friends, Japanese and Americans seem to show their emotions similarly. Many teachers in the United State have a difficult time knowing whether their Japanese students understand and enjoy their lessons. The American teacher is looking for more facial responsiveness than what the Japanese student is comfortable with in the classroom situation.

            It is difficult to generalize about Americans and facial expresiveness because of individual and ethnic differences in the United state. People from certain ethnic backgrounds in the United State tend to be more facially expressive than others. The key, is to try not to judge people whose ways of showing emotion are different. If we judge according to our own cultural norms, we may make the mistake of “reading” the other person incorrectly.