lated from the rest of the world. He recorded the same results,
the exception being that, like the Japanese, these cultures
could not distinguish fear from surprise.
He filmed these stone-age people enacting these same
expressions and then showed them to Americans who cor-
rectly identified them all, proving that the meanings of smiling
and facial expressions are universal.
The fact that expressions are inborn in humans was also
demonstrated by Dr Linda Camras from DePaul University in
Chicago. She measured Japanese and American infants' facial
responses using the Facial Action Coding System (Oster &
Rosenstein, 1991). This system allowed researchers to record,
separate and catalogue infant facial expressions and they
found that both Japanese and American infants displayed
exactly the same emotional expressions.
So far in this book we have concentrated on body language
that is generally common to most parts of the world. The
biggest cultural differences exist mainly in relation to territorial
space, eye contact, touch frequency and insult gestures. The
regions that have the greatest number of different local signals
are Arab countries, parts of Asia and Japan. Understanding cul-
tural differences is too big a subject to be covered in one chapter
so we'll stick to the basic things that you are likely to see abroad.
If a Saudi man holds another man's hand in
public it's a sign of mutual respect. But don't
do it in Australia, Texas or Liverpool, EnglandCultural Differencesculture and the Dani people of West Irian who had been iso-