Decoding Angry and Disgusted Faces Across Cultures: Facial Prototypes and Software Matter

Although the same emotion can be related to different facial prototypes, little is known about the impact of differences in these prototypes on emotion perception. The present research aimed to investigate the impact of different facial prototypes on emotion perception, focusing specifically on anger and disgust. Four major prototypes of anger and six major prototypes of disgust by Asian and White targets were generated by FaceGen and MetaHuman programs. These prototypes were presented to participants from Canada and China, who were asked to identify the corresponding emotions. The results revealed that emotional signals conveyed by different facial prototypes were not uniform. While some prototypes cued distinctive emotions, others cued mixed emotions. Moreover, the signal value of specific prototypes varied across perceiver culture, with prototypes generally perceived as more mixed in Chinese compared to Canadian participants. Notably, emotional signals were also influenced by the facial generation software. Together these findings highlight the importance of considering the impact of specific facial prototypes on emotion perception, especially in cross-cultural contexts, and caution researchers to be mindful of the facial generation software when examining potential variability in emotional decoding associated with different facial prototypes.