Toddlers, Apes, Japanese Unlock Expression Secrets

Het mooiste moment tijdens het promotieonderzoek van sociaal psycholoog Chris Riddell was toen hij hoorde dat hij een beurs kreeg om naar Japan te gaan. 'Het had bloed, zweet en tranen gekost om deze grote studie op te zetten, het was prachtig dat ik twee maanden naar Japan mocht om hem uit te voeren.' Er moest daarna nog een hoop gebeuren, bijvoorbeeld worstelen met de Japanse bureaucratie, maar het ging toch maar mooi door.

From cute clips to horror films

Riddell studied two equally sized groups of 140 Dutch and Japanese participants, half of them children. 'I showed them videos, ranging from cheesy to frightening; the adults also watched horror clips. I observed their reactions via camera and later asked which emotions they had felt and how strongly.' It doesn't sound very complicated, but much emotion research is conducted in a far more indirect way, Riddell explains. Raised in Australia and living in the Netherlands since 2014, he says: 'Usually, researchers will ask participants to simply imagine biting into a rotten apple, or to pull a disgusted face.'

Getting as close as possible to real emotions

Riddell wanted to try and see how emotions are expressed in the most naturalistic way possible. How do people recognise and generate emotions? How does this develop as we grow up? What about in other animals, and in different cultures? These questions led to a wide range of experiments into emotions such as fear, embarrassment, and happiness.

The Dutch and Japanese groups produced clear results. 'Japanese adults displayed less intense emotions on their faces than Dutch adults, yet afterwards they reported experiencing emotions of the same intensity in response to the same videos. Among children, this difference did not appear.' Cultural norms evidently instil certain inhibitions about showing emotions during development, Riddell thinks. 'We often look at things from a Western perspective. But if a Japanese colleague seems a little less shaken by a dramatic incident at work, that doesn't mean they're necessarily less affected inside.'

Orangutans less clear-cut

'We also tend to think humans are the only species with highly developed emotions,' Riddell notes, 'because they are supposedly linked to language.' Increasingly, research shows that animals know far more about language than we long assumed, so Riddell pursued an interesting path. The orangutans in his study, however, were less clear-cut than the human participants.

Riddell showed apes and humans videos of exuberantly laughing peers-the so-called playface. Fifteen-month-old children and adults were easy to compare: 'Adults were less inclined to laugh; at most, they smiled. Children did join in.' With orangutans it was trickier. 'We only had six individuals, with whom we ran 150 tests in total. Statistically, that number was too low, but it seemed they responded less than humans.' That doesn't necessarily mean the apes experienced fewer emotions, Riddell adds. 'It might also be because, unlike humans, they aren't accustomed to immersing themselves in what they see on a screen.'

Complex yet fascinating

Riddell reflects: 'In this field it's impossible to keep all conditions identical and change only one variable, as in physics. Social interactions are full of loose ends and mutual reinforcement. That's precisely what makes them complex yet fascinating. In my research I tried to avoid losing this richness, but to chart it as systematically as possible.'

Riddell's insights can be useful, for example, in collaborating with colleagues from other cultures. Personally, he also learned a lot. 'I started in May 2020, in the middle of Covid lockdowns. In those early years it was really challenging to study emotions and social interaction.' It was only at the end of his third year that he published his first article. 'I'd hoped to do that in my second year, but I learned to be patient and just keep working hard. In the end, it all worked out.'