Development of a facial‐expression database of Chinese Han, Hui and Tibetan people

Recently, cross‐cultural facial‐expression recognition has become a research hotspot, and a standardised facial‐expression material system can significantly help researchers compare and demonstrate the results of other studies. We developed a facial‐expression database of Chinese Han, Hui and Tibetan ethnicities. In this study, six basic human facial expressions (and one neutral expression) were collected from 200 Han, 220 Hui and 210 Tibetan participants who lived in these regions. Four experts on each ethnicity evaluated the facial‐expression images according to the expressions, and only those achieving inter‐rater agreement were retained. Subsequently, 240 raters evaluated these images according to the seven emotions and rated the intensity of the expressions. Consequently, 2980 images were included in the database, including 930 images of Han individuals, 962 images of Hui individuals and 1088 images of Tibetan individuals. In conclusion, the facial‐expression database of Chinese Han, Hui and Tibetan people was representative and reliable with a recognition rate of over 60%, making it well‐suited for cross‐cultural research on emotions.