Production of Emotional Facial Expressions in European American, Japanese, and Chinese Infants.

European American, Japanese, and Chinese 11-month-olds participated in emotion-inducing laboratory procedures. Facial responses were scored with BabyFACS, an anatomically based coding system. Overall, Chinese infants were less expressive than European American and Japanese infants. On measures of smiling and crying, Chinese infants scored lower than European American infants, whereas Japanese infants were similar to the European American infants or fell between the two other groups. Results suggest that differences in expressivity between European American and Chinese infants are more robust than those between European American and Japanese infants and that Chinese and Japanese infants can differ significantly. Cross-cultural differences were also found for some specific brow, cheek, and midface facial actions (e.g., brows lowered). These are discussed in terms of current controversies about infant affective facial expressions. Over 25 years ago, Ekman, Sorenson, and Friesen (1969) conducted a landmark study demonstrating that preliterate New Guinea tribespeople identified a number of emotional facial expressions similar to participants in three literate cultures: Japan, Brazil, and the United States. These findings stood in strong contrast to earlier anthropological descriptions of numerous cross-cultural differences in adult expressive behavior (e.g., Birdwhistell, 1970; LaBarre, 1947). To resolve this apparent conflict, Ekman (1972) proposed that a species-specif ic set of