Exploring Hindu Indian emotion expressions: Evidence for accurate recognition by Americans and Indians

Subjects were presented with videotaped expressions of 10 classic Hindu emo tions. The 10 emotions were (in rough translation from Sanskrit) anger, dis gust, fear, heroism, humor-amusment, love, peace, sadness, shame-embarrassm ent, and wonder. These emotions (except for shame) and their portrayal were described about 2,000 years ago in the Natayasastra, and are enacted in th e contemporary Hindu classical dance. The expressions are dynamic and inclu de both the face and the body, especially the hands. Three different expres sive versions of each emotion were presented, along with 15 neutral express ions. American and Indian college students responded to each of these 45 ex pressions using either a fixed-response format (10 emotion names and "neutr al/no emotion") or a totally free response format. Participants from both c ountries were quite accurate in identifying emotions correctly using both f ixed-choice (65% correct, expected value of 9%) and free-response (61% corr ect, expected value close to zero) methods.