Hot spring inn okami-san are sensitive to customer discomfort: NIPS clarifies that the "spirit of omotenashi" is learned through training

People with expertise in hospitality (omotenashi) can discern other people's expressions faster, more keenly and more precisely than a layman. Professor Emeritus Ryuusuke Kakigi of the National Institute for Physiological Sciences and his colleagues clarified this by carrying out a psychology experiment and measuring brain waves. Their subjects were people in the service industry, including hot spring okami-san (traditional female managers), who have expertise in hospitality. It is known that the ability to recognize faces and expressions changes through experience and training, and it is hoped that the researchers' results will be applied to interpersonal communication training and similar situations. The results were published in Scientific Reports.

Humans normally obtain facial information with their vision. N170, an event-related potential component seen in the left and right temporal region of the brain around 170 milliseconds after seeing a face, is a representative example of a brainwave component that reflects brain activity related to this kind of information processing. It is thought that this is a component particular to faces, as it increases in size when the person has seen a face and is also known to change according to the type of facial expression. On the other hand, the P100 component is seen in the left and right occipital region around 100 milliseconds after an image is presented, regardless of what the image is. This P100 component is also known to change depending on the type of facial expression, though not to the extent of the N170 component.

The research group used brainwaves to measure and compare the P100 component and the N170 component when a person sees a face with an expression. Their subjects were 21 people who work in the service industry (the omotenashi group) - the major target group were okami-san in hot spring inns in Gamagori City, Aichi Prefecture - and 19 people who have never worked in the service industry (the control group). They also carried out a psychological experiment at the same time. When the subjects saw an image of a face with an expression, the group asked them to assess whether this was a favorable expression via a rating of 1-7 (the larger the number the more positive the assessment). The images of faces used for this experiment consisted of neutral faces, happy faces and angry faces.

The outcomes of the psychological experiment showed a lower tendency among the omotenashi group to give a favorable assessment when compared to the control group; notably, when they saw a neutral face, their assessment was significantly low - in other words, they judged this to be 'unfavorable'. On the other hand, the results also suggested that they showed little interest in the happy faces. Based on this, it is conceivable that people who have expertise in hospitality read other people's facial expressions more accurately, and so give stricter assessments.

So, what about the brainwave results? First, when the brainwave component P100, which reacts extremely quickly, was compared between the omotenashi group and control group, there was a tendency for the P100 component to be larger among the omotenashi group than the control group. Notably, when the omotenashi group saw a neutral face, the P100 component in the right occipital region became significantly larger, and when they saw an angry face, the P100 component in the right and left occipital regions became significantly larger. However, when it came to the N170 component, known to be specific to faces, no significant difference was seen between the omotenashi group and the control group when they saw faces with different expressions.

In the past, it was thought that the N170 component was important for reading expressions, but the group learned from the results of this research that people who have expertise in hospitality quickly read expressions through even faster processing (the P100 component) after around 100 milliseconds. Notably, they showed keen responses to neutral and angry faces, which is thought to enable them to handle customer dissatisfaction immediately.

These results indicated that the facial and expression information processing of people who have had training in hospitality or who serve customers is different to that of a layman. It is hoped that this research can be applied to training for people who have poor interpersonal communication or have disabilities regarding interpersonal communication and is the first research in the world to objectively clarify hospitality.

Journal Information
Publication: Scientific Reports
Title: The ERP and psychophysical changes related to facial emotion perception by expertise in Japanese hospitality, "OMOTENASHI"
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-11905-2