Cross-cultural evaluations of avatar facial expressions designed by Western and Japanese Designers

The goal of the study is to investigate cultural differences in avatar expression evaluation and apply findings from psychological study in human facial expression recognition. Our previous study using Japanese designed avatars showed there are cultural differences in interpreting avatar facial expressions, and the psychological theory that suggests physical proximity affects facial expression recognition accuracy is also applicable to avatar facial expressions. This paper summarizes the early results of the successive experiment that uses western designed avatars. We observed tendencies of cultural differences in avatar facial expression interpretation in western designed avatars.