The role of facial response in the experience of emotion.

Facial expression and emotional stimuli were varied orthogonally in a 3 x 4 factorial design in order to test whether facial expression is necessary or sufficient to influence emotional experience. Subjects watched a film eliciting fear, sadness, or no emotion, while holding their facial muscles in the position characteristic of fear or sadness, or in an effortful but nonemotional grimace; those in a fourth group received no facial instructions. The subjects believed that the study concerned subliminal perception and that the facial positions were necessary to prevent physiological recording artifacts. The films had powerful effects on reported emotions, the facial expressions none. Correlations between facial expression and reported emotion were zero. Sad and fearful subjects showed distinctive patterns of physiological arousal. Facial expression also tended to affect physiological responses in a manner consistent with an effort hypothesis.     

Conceptual and methodological issues in the judgment of facial expressions of emotion

In two studies, subjects judged a set of facial expressions of emotion by either providing labels of their own choice to describe the stimuli (free-choice condition), choosing a label from a list of emotion words, or choosing a story from a list of emotion stories (fixed-choice conditions). In the free-choice condition, levels of agreement between subjects on the predicted emotion categories for six basic emotions were significantly greater than chance levels, and comparable to those shown in fixed-choice studies. As predicted, there was little to no agreement on a verbal label for contempt. Agreement on contempt was greatly improved when subjects were allowed to identify the expression in terms of an antecedent event for that emotion rather than in terms of a single verbal label, a finding that could not be attributed to the methodological artifact of exclusion in a fixed-choice paradigm. These findings support two conclusions: (1) that the labels used in fixed-choice paradigms accurately reflect the verbal categories people use when free labeling facial expressions of emotion, and (2) that lexically ambiguous emotions, such as contempt, are understood in terms of their situational meanings.This research was supported in part by a Research Scientist Award from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH 06091) to Paul Ekman.     

The development of facial emotion recognition: the role of configural information

The development of children's ability to recognize facial emotions and the role of configural information in this development were investigated. In the study, 100 5-, 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds and 26 adults needed to recognize the emotion displayed by upright and upside-down faces. The same participants needed to recognize the emotion displayed by the top half of an upright or upside-down face that was or was not aligned with a bottom half that displayed another emotion. The results showed that the ability to recognize facial emotion develops with age, with a developmental course that depends on the emotion to be recognized. Moreover, children at all ages and adults exhibited both an inversion effect and a composite effect, suggesting that children rely on configural information to recognize facial emotions.     

Aggressor's response to the victim's facial expression of emotion

Male college students (N = 96) were met by an experimental confederate who either agreed or disagreed with their opinion. The subjects were then given an opportunity to deliver electric shock to the confederate (victim), who responded to the shock with a facial expression of anger, fear, joy, or neutrality. The opinion condition had no effect, but the victim's facial expressions were clearly perceived by the subjects and two of them significantly influenced the amount of shock delivered to the victim by the subjects. The expression of enjoyment (smile) increased aggression while that of anger decreased aggression. The effects of the fear and neutral expressions did not differ from each other, and neither had a consistent significant effect on the amount of shock administered by the subjects.     

The role of experience in spatial test performance: A meta-analysis

The hypothesis that spatial ability is, in part, experientially determined, and that sex differences in spatial ability can be explained by sex differences in spatial experience, can be studied in a correlational manner by examining the relationship between spatial activity participation and spatial ability test performance for males and females. Alternatively, an experimental training situation, comparing male and female susceptibility to training, has been proposed to test the hypothesis that environment has an impact on spatial skills and sex differences in ability. Both lines of research are reviewed here, through the use of meta-analytic techniques. The first meta-analysis reveals a weak but reliable relationship between spatial activity participation and spatial ability. This relationship appears similar for males and females. The second meta-analysis reveals that spatial ability test performance can be improved by training for both sexes. This improvement does not appear different for males and females, however, contrary to a predominant hypothesis in the literature. Training to asymptote may be a better test of the relevance of differential experience to sex differences. Content and duration of training are also discussed as important factors in the effectiveness of training.This research was supported by Grant No. MH39671 from the National Institute of Mental Health. A version of this paper was presented at the biennial meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, Baltimore, Maryland, April 1987. We are grateful to Margaret Signorella and Susan Resnick for providing data. We would also like to thank Judith Dubas, Susan Resnick, Ralph Rosnow, Carolyn Spies, Lance Weinmann, and Marsha Weinraub for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.     

Alternative measures of expressed emotion: a methodological and cautionary note

Undergraduate raters listened to Camberwell Family Interviews that had been conducted with the spouses of depressed patients and then rated each relative with a rating-scale assessment of expressed emotion (EE). Students' ratings of relatives' criticism, hostility, emotional overinvolvement, and warmth were significantly correlated with trained raters' EE assessments obtained in the conventional manner. Despite this correspondence, further analyses revealed that undergraduates' assessments of relatives did not predict 9-month relapse rates in patients. These results highlight the importance of establishing both the concurrent and predictive validity of any alternative measure of EE. They also emphasize the dangers of assuming that significant correlates of EE are necessarily significant predictors of relapse.     

Self-focused attention,facial behavior,autonomic arousal and the experience of emotion

Two experiments examined alternative explanations for the Scheier and Carver(1977) results linking self-focused attention to increased responsivity to emotional stimuli. In both studies autonomic, expressive, and self-report measures of emotional arousal failed to confirm the earlier findings. An individual difference measure reported by others to parallel the effects of situationally manipulated self-attention also failed to confirm the previously reported findings. Though in direct contradiction to Scheier and Carver's results, the results are consistent with a facial feedback hypothesis and with previous findings on the effects of expressive inhibition on self-reports of emotional arousal.This research was supported in part by NSF grant 77-08926 to the first author and by NIMH grant MH 29446 to the third author, as well as by funds from the Lincoln Filene Endowment to Dartmouth College.     

The role of visual experience in the production of emotional facial expressions by blind people: a review

Facial expressions of emotion are nonverbal behaviors that allow us to interact efficiently in social life and respond to events affecting our welfare. This article reviews 21 studies, published between 1932 and 2015, examining the production of facial expressions of emotion by blind people. It particularly discusses the impact of visual experience on the development of this behavior from birth to adulthood. After a discussion of three methodological considerations, the review of studies reveals that blind subjects demonstrate differing capacities for producing spontaneous expressions and voluntarily posed expressions. Seventeen studies provided evidence that blind and sighted spontaneously produce the same pattern of facial expressions, even if some variations can be found, reflecting facial and body movements specific to blindness or differences in intensity and control of emotions in some specific contexts. This suggests that lack of visual experience seems to not have a major impact when this behavior is generated spontaneously in real emotional contexts. In contrast, eight studies examining voluntary expressions indicate that blind individuals have difficulty posing emotional expressions. The opportunity for prior visual observation seems to affect performance in this case. Finally, we discuss three new directions for research to provide additional and strong evidence for the debate regarding the innate or the culture-constant learning character of the production of emotional facial expressions by blind individuals: the link between perception and production of facial expressions, the impact of display rules in the absence of vision, and the role of other channels in expression of emotions in the context of blindness.     

Extinction of an emotional response in the presence of facial expressions of emotion

Previous studies (Lanzetta & Orr, 1980, 1981; Orr & Lanzetta, 1980) have demonstrated that fear facial expressions have the functional properties of conditioned excitatory stimuli, while happy expressions behave as conditioned inhibitors of emotional responses. The present study uses a summation conditioning procedure to distinguish between associative and nonassociative (selective sensitizations, attentional) interpretations of these findings. A neutral tone was first established as a conditioned excitatory CS by reinforcing tone presentations with shock. In subsequent nonreinforced test trials the excitatory tone was paired with either fear, happy, or neutral facial expressions. A tone alone and a tone/nonface slide compound were used as controls. The results indicate that phasic and tonic skin conductance responses to the tone/fear expression compound were significantly larger during extinction than for all other experimental and control groups. No significant differences were found among these latter conditions. The findings support the assumption that the excitatory characteristics of fear expressions do not depend on associative mechanisms. In the presence of fear cues, fear facial expressions intensify the emotional reaction and disrupt extinction of a previously acquired fear response. Happy facial expressions however, do not function as conditioned inhibitors in the absence of reinforcement, suggesting that the previously found inhibition was associative in nature.This research was supported by NSF grant No. 77-08926 and by funds from the Lincoln Filene Endowment to Dartmouth College.     

The experience of anger and sadness in everyday problems impacts age differences in emotion regulation

The authors examined regulation of the discrete emotions anger and sadness in adolescents through older adults in the context of describing everyday problem situations. The results support previous work; in comparison to younger age groups, older adults reported that they experienced less anger and reported that they used more passive and fewer proactive emotion-regulation strategies in interpersonal situations. The experience of anger partially mediated age differences in the use of proactive emotion regulation. This suggests that at least part of the reason why older adults use fewer proactive emotion-regulation strategies is their decreased experience of anger. Results are discussed in the context of lifespan theories of emotional development.     

On the universality and cultural specificity of emotion recognition: a meta-analysis

A meta-analysis examined emotion recognition within and across cultures. Emotions were universally recognized at better-than-chance levels. Accuracy was higher when emotions were both expressed and recognized by members of the same national, ethnic, or regional group, suggesting an in-group advantage. This advantage was smaller for cultural groups with greater exposure to one another, measured in terms of living in the same nation, physical proximity, and telephone communication. Majority group members were poorer at judging minority group members than the reverse. Cross-cultural accuracy was lower in studies that used a balanced research design, and higher in studies that used imitation rather than posed or spontaneous emotional expressions. Attributes of study design appeared not to moderate the size of the in-group advantage.     

Effects of early experience on children's recognition of facial displays of emotion

The present research examines visual perception of emotion in both typical and atypical development. To examine the processes by which perceptual mechanisms become attuned to the contingencies of affective signals in the environment, the authors measured the sequential, content-based properties of feature detection in emotion recognition processes. To evaluate the role of experience, they compared typically developing children with physically abused children, who were presumed to have experienced high levels of threat and hostility. As predicted, physically abused children accurately identified facial displays of anger on the basis of less sensory input than did controls, which suggests that physically abused children have facilitated access to representations of anger. The findings are discussed in terms of experiential processes in perceptual learning.     

The role of disgust emotions in the observer response to facial disfigurement

Social intrusions by observers are commonly reported by those with disfiguring conditions. This study examined the role of disgust emotions in the observer response. A group of students (N = 48) completed quantitative questionnaires measuring extent of disfigurement, whilst viewing images of faces with varying disfigurements. Another group of students (N = 84) completed quantitative questionnaires measuring level of disgust elicited by the same images. Disgust sensitivity was measured using the Disgust Scale Revised. Observers reported greater levels of disgust (p < .01) with increasing severity of facial disfigurement. Individuals with a higher disgust sensitivity reported increased levels of disgust in response to faces of mild (p = .03), moderate (p = .02) and severe (p < .01) disfigurement compared to those with a lower disgust sensitivity. This provides an explanatory framework for the avoidance reactions of observers and may be important in understanding variability in adjustment following disfigurement.     

Consciousness and the varieties of emotion experience: a theoretical framework

Data reviewed suggest that previous theories of emotion experience are too narrow in scope and that lack of consensus is due to the fact that emotion experience takes various forms and is heterogenous. The authors treat separately the content of emotion experience, the underlying nonconscious correspondences, and processes producing emotion experience. They classify the nature and content of emotion experience and propose that it depends on 3 aspects of attention: mode (analytic-synthetic; detached-immersed), direction (self-world), and focus (evaluation-action). The account is informed by a 2-level view of consciousness in which phenomenology (1st order) is distinguished from awareness (2nd order). These distinctions enable the authors to differentiate and account for cases of "unconscious" emotion, in which there is an apparent lack of phenomenology or awareness.     

The question-behaviour effect: A theoretical and methodological review and meta-analysis

Research has demonstrated that asking people questions about a behaviour can lead to behaviour change. Despite many, varied studies in different domains, it is only recently that this phenomenon has been studied under the umbrella term of the question-behaviour effect (QBE) and moderators of the effect have been investigated. With a particular focus on our own contributions, this article: (1) provides an overview of QBE research; (2) reviews and offers new evidence concerning three theoretical accounts of the QBE (behavioural simulation and processing fluency; attitude accessibility; cognitive dissonance); (3) reports a new meta-analysis of QBE studies (k = 66, reporting 94 tests) focusing on methodological moderators. The findings of this meta-analysis support a small significant effect of the QBE (g = 0.14, 95% CI = 0.11, 0.18, p < .001) with smaller effect sizes observed in more carefully controlled studies that exhibit less risk of bias and (4) also considers directions for future research on the QBE, especially studies that use designs with low risk of bias and consider desirable and undesirable behaviour separately.     

Shame,guilt, and facial emotion processing: initial evidence for a positive relationship between guilt-proneness and facial emotion recognition ability

Shame and guilt are closely related self-conscious emotions of negative affect that give rise to divergent self-regulatory and motivational behaviours. While guilt-proneness has demonstrated positive relationships with self-report measures of empathy and adaptive interpersonal functioning, shame-proneness tends to be unrelated or inversely related to empathy and is associated with interpersonal difficulties. At present, no research has examined relationships between shame and guilt-proneness with facial emotion recognition ability. Participants (N?=?363) completed measures of shame and guilt-proneness along with a facial emotion recognition task which assessed the ability to identify displays of anger, sadness, happiness, fear, disgust, and shame. Guilt-proneness was consistently positively associated with facial emotion recognition ability. In contrast, shame-proneness was unrelated to capacity for facial emotion recognition. Findings provide support for theory arguing that guilt and empathy operate synergistically and may also help explain the inverse relationship between guilt-proneness and propensity for aggressive behaviour.     

Habitual emotion regulation and the facial grimace

Summary.-Images of pleasant scenes usually produce increased activity over the zygomaticus major muscie, as measured by electromyography (EMG), while less activity is elicited by unpleasant images. However, increases in zygomaticus major EMG activity while viewing unpleasant images have occasionally been reported in the literature on affective facial expression (i.e., "grimacing"). To examine the possibility that individual differences in emotion regulation might be responsible for this inconsistently observed phenomenon, the habitual emotion regulation tendencies of 63 participants (32 women) were assessed and categorized according to their regulatory tendencies. Participants viewed emotionally salient images while zygomaticus major EMG activity was recorded. Participants also provided self-report ratings of their experienced emotional valence and arousal while viewing the pictures. Despite demonstrating intact affective ratings, the "grimacing" pattern of zygomaticus major activity was observed in those who were less likely to use the cognitive reappraisal strategy to regulate their emotions.     

The forced-choice paradigm and the perception of facial expressions of emotion

The view that certain facial expressions of emotion are universally agreed on has been challenged by studies showing that the forced-choice paradigm may have artificially forced agreement. This article addressed this methodological criticism by offering participants the opportunity to select a none of these terms are correct option from a list of emotion labels in a modified forced-choice paradigm. The results show that agreement on the emotion label for particular facial expressions is still greater than chance, that artifactual agreement on incorrect emotion labels is obviated, that participants select the none option when asked to judge a novel expression, and that adding 4 more emotion labels does not change the pattern of agreement reported in universality studies. Although the original forced-choice format may have been prone to artifactual agreement, the modified forced-choice format appears to remedy that problem.     

The role of spectacles in facial memory: a replication and extension

A total of 187 subjects in three conditions involving 1- or 3-sec. exposure times and 10-min. or 7-day delays were shown 20 photographs of faces, half of which were bespectacled, and then tested from a set of 40 consisting of the original 20 mixed up with 20 new ones, half of which were also bespectacled. Accuracy of recognition declined with shorter exposure and longer delay and was lower for faces with than without spectacles at the shorter delay. In all three conditions, there were more false-alarms for faces with than without glasses. It is concluded that eyeglasses did not serve as an efficient discriminating feature in recognition memory, and it is recommended that positive eyewitness identification of people wearing spectacles be treated with particular caution.