It’s been such a journey, and I’m so grateful to finally share this! Huge thanks to my incredible co-authors — Elizabeth Blevins, Ying-Chun Chen, Michael Ko, Nai-Shing Yen, Brian Knutson, and Jeanne Tsai! 🙏

This may have implications for our understanding of what facial expressions convey in different cultures. Check out the paper if you’re interested! psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

However, when reputation was either clearly low or clearly high, European Americans invested according to the target’s reputation, ignoring their expressions. In contrast, Taiwanese participants consistently invested more in calm and neutral, over excited, targets.

In a series of 4 studies using the Trust Game paradigm, we observed a consistent (but complicated! 😲) pattern: When reputation was ambiguous, European Americans and Taiwanese invested more in targets whose expressions matched their culture’s ideal affect.