The Impact of Spontaneity and Presentation Mode on the Ingroup Advantage in Recognizing Angry and Disgusted Facial Expressions

Previous research has found that individuals are more accurate at recognizing facial expressions of individuals from their own cultural background than those from a different cultural background, known as the ingroup advantage. However, most studies investigating the ingroup advantage have primarily focused on posed and static facial expressions, paying less attention to spontaneous and dynamic facial expressions. To investigate whether the ingroup advantage is influenced by spontaneity (posed and spontaneous) and presentation mode (static and dynamic) of facial expressions, we recruited participants from China, Canada, and the Netherlands to recognize posed and spontaneous facial expressions of anger and disgust displayed by Chinese and Dutch models (Experiment 1), as well as static and dynamic facial expressions (Experiment 2). The results showed that, in most cases, there was an ingroup advantage in the recognition of both posed and spontaneous expressions, with the ingroup advantage being significantly higher for posed expressions compared to spontaneous expressions. Additionally, an ingroup advantage was observed in the recognition of both static and dynamic expressions, although there was no significant difference between the two overall. These findings suggest that the ingroup advantage in facial expression recognition is influenced by the spontaneity of the expressions, but may not be affected by the mode of expression presentation. The implications of this research are significant in expanding our understanding of the ingroup advantage and deepening our knowledge of cross-cultural facial expression recognition.