We are pleased to announce the publication of a new review article, “Mixed Emotions in Cross‐Cultural Communication,” authored by Dr. Xia Fang, our principal investigator, and Dr. Kerry Kawakami from York University. The paper was published on June 26, 2025, in Social and Personality Psychology Compass..

In this review, authors explore how culture shapes the production and perception of mixed emotions, particularly through nonverbal facial expressions. The article highlights a key finding: individuals from Eastern cultures tend to express and perceive richer blends of emotions simultaneously, while individuals from Western cultures typically prioritize communicating a single, dominant emotion.

The paper further examines how cultural dimensions such as interdependent versus independent self-construals, holistic versus analytical cognitive styles, dialectical versus nondialectical thinking, and historical societal homogeneity versus heterogeneity may drive these differences. However, the authors note that empirical evidence linking these cultural dimensions to mixed emotional communication is still limited, partly due to methodological challenges and discrepancies in the level of analysis.

To address these gaps, the article calls for large-scale, collaborative research projects that include diverse participant samples, and advocates for leveraging big data and computational methods to deepen our understanding of cultural variations in the communication of mixed emotions.