Paul Ekman is an American
scientist. He wanted to know the answer to this question: Do people show
feelings in the same way everywhere in the world?
Ekman took photos of people in
the USA.
Some people looked happy, some
looked sad, some looked angry, some looked surprised, & some looked
frightened.
He showed the photos to people
from 21 countries, & asked them to match the feelings with the faces. He
found that everyone could do this quite easily: everyone agreed which people
were happy, which were sad, which were angry, & so on.
Then Ekman went to a village in
Papua New Guinea. In this village, people had no television, they saw no films.
& they never saw people from other countries. So they didn’t know what
people from other countries looked like. Ekman showed his photos to the people
in this village, & asked them the same question: which people are happy?
That even here they could answer the questions quite easily.
So Ekman's conclusion was that
people do show feelings in the same way everywhere in the world.
