Americans and Japanese Read Faces Differently

[fat mike]

http://www.livescience.com/health/07...l_culture.html[QUOTEJapan, people tend to look to the eyes for emotional cues, whereas Americans tend to look to the mouth, says researcher Masaki Yuki, a behavioral scientist at Hokkaido University in Japan.

This could be because the Japanese, when in the presence of others, try to suppress their emotions more than Americans do, he said.

In any case, the eyes are more difficult to control than the mouth, he said, so they probably provide better clues about a person's emotional state even if he or she is trying to hide it.][/quote]

a coworker once told me i looked at poeple's mouths when they talked...lol-she was a spanish lady

As a child growing up in Japan, Yuki was fascinated by pictures of American celebrities.

"Their smiles looked strange to me," Yuki told LiveScience. "They opened their mouths too widely, and raised the corners of their mouths in an exaggerated way."

Japanese people tend to shy away from overt displays of emotion, and rarely smile or frown with their mouths, Yuki explained, because the Japanese culture tends to emphasize conformity, humbleness and emotional suppression, traits that are thought to promote better relationships.

i might have thought in such a formal setting people might be shy about makng eye contact...