The “rolling” is indeed part of the gesture. Without it (simply looking up), the meaning is quite different . . . possibly an appeal to God or the heavens for strength or wisdom.
I have noticed that the rolling has become more extreme in recent years.
The study showed a difference of relative focus on different regions of the face when guessing emotions of others from facial expression, NOT that people from different cultures have different expressions for the same emotion.
How many pages deep in the Google results did you have to look to find this? LOL people are hilarious
Well ok, when you talk about basic facial expressions (smiling & laughing=happiness; frowning & crying=sadness)…the basic ones appear to be instinctual. Babies e.g. smile when they are happy & cry when sad regardless of the culture they were raised in.
But eye-rolling doesn’t seem like an organic facial expression/gesture to me. It seems learned.
Many emotions have hard-wired expressions. Nearly all, in fact. However, I have to say that eye-rolling isn’t really an expression, and I suspect it’s more learned.
Huh. I always thought eye-rolling (in U.S.) was simply a pronounced blink and glance heavenward, usually with a tut or a sigh…or a mild profanity. Much as Nava describes.
I seem to recall eye-rolling described in some older Chinese tales as being indicative of greed or excitement, maybe in “The Good Earth.” There, I imagined it to be a more 3-D rolling around of the eyes.
ETA: Thanks to this, I’ve been trying to roll my eyes all around, and now my contacts are getting wonky.
Um, do you even read your own posts? You are the one who asserted, in the second post, that "Most facial expressions are cross-cultural, if not all. " They clearly, provably, without a doubt are not.
First hit, actually. You should try it sometime.
[sub]I know, this is a waste of time. Presenting get lives with facts is like presenting a cat with a head of lettuce. It just gets ignored.[/sub]
Reported for personal insult in GQ. 
Your study was about cultural differences in focus on different facial features as a way of reading emotion in others, NOT the actual expressions themselves… I’ve actually read several books on the subject of facial expressions. I suggest you start down that same path. Would you like some suggestions?
This may be junior modding here, but the less passive-agressive option might be to simply list a few relevant titles. There may be other folks interested in the generalities of this topic without caring about – or wanting to be involved in – this particular little pissing contest.
Moderator Note
This being GQ, let’s dial it back. No warnings issued.
I’m not sure what the smiley is supposed to suggest. Do you mean you’re joking and don’t really consider it an insult? In any case, it would be better not to be snarky to people if you’re sensitive about them responding in kind.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
This is actually a practical guide on reading emotions through expression, as well as a general text.
Here is a good article on the universality of facial expressions.
In Norwegian we have a verb that’s used exclusively for looking upwards in exasperation. “himle”. I’ve never head it used in any other context than “himle med øya” - “turn your eyes heaven-/sky-wards”. Indicates a well established expression, I’d say.
Where I have worked, there were, in the past, allegations of employee eye-rolling so extreme that it was audible on the telephone.
It has various names around the Caribbean but instead of rolling your eyes people suck air in through their teeth(in Trinidad they call it a stupsh?). Think the sound of air escaping a puncture.
Steups.
And here is another cite that shows facial expressions are not as universal as once thought. The expriments that originally presented toward universality were generally flawed, as they used a methodology that limited reponses to a preset list. Free associating experiments have given vastly different results.
The claim was never about READING faces. It was about the fact that people make specific faces for specific emotion, I.e., most major “pure” emotional states produce a hard-wired facial expression. The study even mentioned that facial recognition software is now better than humans are at reading emotion ffrom facial expression. Here’s the relevant quote from your link:
“For the record, though humans are pretty lousy at identifying each other’s expressions,robots do it really wellthese days…”
And here’s the embedded link FROM that quoted text:
software can read emotions very well
That particular research was done only on Americans, and it identified 21 separate expressions that were hardwired for everyone. If you want to prove me wrong, then find a study showing that facial recognition software is able to sort people into cultures by facial expression alone.
You never will. It’s hardwired. Most people who’ve raised children from birth, and paid close atrention to their kid’s facial expressions early on, know this.
NM, moving on.