Are non-verbal facial cues of altruism cross-culturally readable?

Abstract

Although both dynamic (i.e., facial expressions) and static facial traits are used as cues of altruism, only static facial traits have been shown to be cross-culturally readable with respect to altruism detection skills. To investigate whether dynamic facial cues of altruism are also cross-cultural, we asked French subjects to estimate the altruism of Japanese individuals on the basis of silent video clips. These video clips were taken from a previous experiment, which found that Japanese raters were able to accurately estimate the altruism of a videotaped Japanese individual. By using the same design and stimuli in France, we found that French raters were unable to assess the altruism of a Japanese individual. Hence, our results suggest that dynamic facial cues of altruistic intent are culturally specific rather than universally readable.