Abstract: Abstract Research of facial emotion has achieved a great of improvement since 1990s, especially in the cultural differences in the perception of facial emotion. This study aims to study the influence of the background facial emotion on the perception of an individual’s emotion in the Chinese and Western cultural context. 　　The data were collected through the central emotion judgment task and emotion recognition task with a sample of 30 college students in China and 30 college students in USA. 45 emotion pictures from JACFEE were used. 　　In judging people’s facial emotions, Chinese were more susceptible to background facial emotion than American. The reaction time of Chinese participants’ judgment of central facial emotion with the background facial emotions was significant longer than one of central facial emotion without the background facial emotions; When the background facial emotion were consistent with the central facial emotion, Chinese participants judged the intensity of central facial emotion greater; when the background facial emotion were inconsistent with the central facial emotion, Chinese participants judged the intensity of central facial emotion weaker. However, American participants’ judgment of central facial emotion wasn’t influenced by background facial emotion. When the background facial emotion was changed, the recognition accuracy of Chinese participants was significant higher than one of American participants. 　　The background emotional stimulus as perceived would be different for Americans and Chinese, that when Americans infer a person’s emotion, they focus on the person, whereas Chinese attend to the whole social background.

Key words: culture, facial emotion, perception, background

摘要： 随机选取中美大学生各30名，探讨在中西方文化背景下，背景表情对个体知觉目标表情是否会产生影响。结果:（1）当有背景表情时，中国被试对目标表情强度评定的时间比无背景表情时的评定时间长；且背景表情与目标表情一致时，中国被试判断目标表情的强度最强；不一致时，则最弱；而美国被试对目标表情强度的评分及反应时不受背景表情的影响。（2）当背景表情发生变化时，中国被试对于图片的再认正确率显著高于美国被试。结论：美国被试会将注意力放在目标表情上，不易受背景表情的影响，而中国被试对目标表情的判断会受到背景表情的影响。

关键词: 文化, 表情, 知觉, 背景