A study on Japanese facial expressions: analyzing facial expressions of happiness, bitter (wry) smile and interest

摘要

Many studies have been done by using Facial Action Coding System (Ekman & Friesen, 1978) so far mainly by using still photographs. As Keltner (1995) pointed out, they have methodological weekness which was caused by not using motion pictures and, the time sequential analysis. The present study compared facial expressions of three emotions; happiness, bitter smile, interest, on the basis of codes coded by FACS as well as time sequential analysis for each AU. As the results indicated, the significant differences were found in latency and duration for some AU's between happiness and bitter smile, also AU combinations were not different between them. For happiness and interest, facial expression was found to have 'rapid onset' and ' short duration' which Ekman (1992) proposed as criteria of 'basic 'motions'. It was suggested that happiness and interest are basic emotions, while bitter smile not.