Bodily expression of emotion

The question whether body movements and body postures are indicative of specific emotions is a matter of debate. While some studies have found evidence for specific body movements accompanying specific emotions, others indicate that movement behavior (aside from facial expression) may be only indicative of the quantity (intensity) of emotion, but not of its quality. The study reported here is an attempt to demonstrate that body movements and postures to some degree are specific for certain emotions. A sample of 224 video takes, in which actors and actresses portrayed the emotions of elated joy, happiness, sadness, despair, fear, terror, cold anger, hot anger, disgust, contempt, shame, guilt, pride, and boredom via a scenario approach, was analyzed using coding schemata for the analysis of body movements and postures. Results indicate that some emotion-specific movement and posture characteristics seem to exist, but that for body movements differences between emotions can be partly explained by the dimension of activation. While encoder (actor) differences are rather pronounced with respect to specific movement and posture habits, these differences are largely independent from the emotion-specific differences found. The results are discussed with respect to emotion-specific discrete expression models in contrast to dimensional models of emotion encoding. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social reactions to the expression of emotion

Abstract

Weeping has traditionally been seen as a sign of weakness, and laughter as a sign of health. In the current study, attitudes and reactions toward emotional expressions were evaluated in a laboratory setting. Subjects (n = 168) viewed a movie with a confederate who cried, laughed, or expressed no emotion; they then engaged in 3 minutes of videotaped interaction. Results indicated that men were liked best when they cried, and women when they did not. Criers were seen as more depressed and emotional than individuals who laughed, but not as more feminine. More personal conversations were initiated in the Control condition, and contagion occurred in the Laugh condition, where moods were most positive. These results are consistent with other research which suggests that gender role expectations of emotional expression, especially crying, may have changed in recent years; they also demonstrate that reactions to others' expressions depend upon the expression and also the expressor.     

Speech perception and vocal expression of emotion

Two experiments using identical stimuli were run to determine whether the vocal expression of emotion affects the speed with which listeners can identify emotion words. Sentences were spoken in an emotional tone of voice (Happy, Disgusted, or Petrified), or in a Neutral tone of voice. Participants made speeded lexical decisions about the word or pseudoword in sentence-final position. Critical stimuli were emotion words that were either semantically congruent or incongruent with the tone of voice of the sentence. Experiment 1, with randomised presentation of tone of voice, showed no effect of congruence or incongruence. Experiment 2, with blocked presentation of tone of voice, did show such effects: Reaction times for congruent trials were faster than those for baseline trials and incongruent trials. Results are discussed in terms of expectation (e.g., Kitayama, 1990, 1991, 1996) and emotional connotation, and implications for models of word recognition are considered.     

Overcoming the emotion experience/expression dichotomy

We challenge the classic experience/expression dichotomous account of emotions, according to which experiencing and expressing an emotion are two independent processes. By endorsing Dewey's and Mead's accounts of emotions, and capitalizing upon recent empirical findings, we propose that expression is part of the emotional experience. This proposal partly challenges the purely constructivist approach endorsed by the authors of the target article.     

Adult attachment and the perception of facial expression of emotion

Adult attachment orientation has been associated with specific patterns of emotion regulation. The present research examined the effects of attachment orientation on the perceptual processing of emotional stimuli. Experimental participants played computerized movies of faces that expressed happiness, sadness, and anger. Over the course of the movies, the facial expressions became neutral. Participants reported the frame at which the initial expression no longer appeared on the face. Under conditions of no distress (Study 1), fearfully attached individuals saw the offset of both happiness and anger earlier, and preoccupied and dismissive individuals later, than the securely attached individuals. Under conditions of distress (Study 2), insecurely attached individuals perceived the offset of negative facial expressions as occurring later than did the secure individuals, and fearfully attached individuals saw the offset later than either of the other insecure groups. The mechanisms underlying the effects are considered.     

Deafness and perception of nonverbal expression of emotion

Compensatory sensitivity is said to follow loss of a primary communicative channel. In previous studies in which how accurately deaf and hearing people perceive emotional expression was compared, caricatures or nonverbal behavior of hearing people were stimuli. These studies did not specifically address the possibility that deaf people show nonverbal behavior which might be related to their sign language. To assess this possibility two methodological innovations were made. Stimuli were displayed of nonverbal messages with various emotional contents presented by deaf people in sign language. Also, no verbal labels identified emotional content of the messages. Sixty hearing and 45 deaf male college students watched films of emotional expressions in sign language. The participants tried to identify the emotional content of each film by matching content to one of six photographs of facial expressions. Responses were analyzed for accuracy in perceiving the emotional content. Hearing participants were more accurate in perceiving the display of Happiness. Display of Disgust was perceived better by the deaf participants. No support was found for compensatory sensitivity among the deaf participants.     

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.     

Suppressor effects and age differences in the expression of anxious emotion

This study examined the role of suppressor effects on age differences in anxious emotion. Children and adolescents (n = 1099) ages 7–18 years were assessed for separation anxiety, social anxiety, and generalized anxiety. Results of zero-order correlations indicated a significant negative association between age and separation anxiety but no association for social anxiety and generalized anxiety. However, semi-partial correlations indicated the presence of a cooperative suppressor effect such that the associations between age and social anxiety as well as age and generalized anxiety symptoms became significant and positive and the association with separation anxiety became larger in a simultaneous regression analysis of each facet with age. Similar effects occurred when controlling for hyperarousal in an ANCOVA across grade levels. Results suggest that attempts to understand developmental differences in anxious emotion in childhood and adolescence will be facilitated by parsing facets of anxious emotion and attention to potential suppressor effects.     

A new pan-cultural facial expression of emotion

We obtained the first evidence of a facial expression unique to contempt. Contrary to our prediction, this contempt expression was not culture-specific but was recognized by people in Estonia S.S.R., Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Scotland, Turkey, the United States, and West Sumatra. Pan-cultural agreement about the contempt expression was as high as has been found previously for other emotions.We are grateful to our collaborators, Anthony Chan, Karl Heider, Rainer Krause, Rolf Kuschel, Ayhan LeCompte, Tom Pitcairn, Pio Ricci-Bitti, Klaus Scherer, Masatoshi Tomita, Athanase Tzavaras, Arnold Upmeyer, and Jaan Valsiner; to Maureen O'Sullivan for comments on this report. Paul Ekman's work is supported by a Research Scientist Award (MH 06092) from the National Institute of Mental Health.     

Facial appearance, gender, and emotion expression

Western gender stereotypes describe women as affiliative and more likely to show happiness and men as dominant and more likely to show anger. The authors assessed the hypothesis that the gender-stereotypic effects on perceptions of anger and happiness are partially mediated by facial appearance markers of dominance and affiliation by equating men's and women's faces for these cues. In 2 studies, women were rated as more angry and men as more happy-a reversal of the stereotype. Ratings of sadness, however, were not systematically affected. It is posited that markers of affiliation and dominance, themselves confounded with gender, interact with the expressive cues for anger and happiness to produce emotional perceptions that have been viewed as simple gender stereotypes.     

Impact of intended emotion intensity on cue utilization and decoding accuracy in vocal expression of emotion

Actors vocally portrayed happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust with weak and strong emotion intensity while reading brief verbal phrases aloud. The portrayals were recorded and analyzed according to 20 acoustic cues. Listeners decoded each portrayal by using forced-choice or quantitative ratings. The results showed that (a) portrayals with strong emotion intensity yielded higher decoding accuracy than portrayals with weak intensity, (b) listeners were able to decode the intensity of portrayals, (c) portrayals of the same emotion with different intensity yielded different patterns of acoustic cues, and (d) certain acoustic cues (e.g., fundamental frequency, high-frequency energy) were highly predictive of listeners' ratings of emotion intensity. It is argued that lack of control for emotion intensity may account for some of the inconsistencies in cue utilization reported in the literature.     

Visual-field bias in the judgment of facial expression of emotion

The left and right hemispheres of the brain are differentially related to the processing of emotions. Although there is little doubt that the right hemisphere is relatively superior for processing negative emotions, controversy exists over the hemispheric role in the processing of positive emotions. Eighty right-handed normal male participants were examined for visual-field (left-right) differences in the perception of facial expressions of emotion. Facial composite (RR, LL) and hemifacial (R, L) sets depicting emotion expressions of happiness and sadness were prepared. Pairs of such photographs were presented bilaterally for 150 ms, and participants were asked to select the photographs that looked more expressive. A left visual-field superiority (a right-hemisphere function) was found for sad facial emotion. A hemispheric advantage in the perception of happy expression was not found.     

Emotional state and the detection of change in facial expression of emotion

A new method is presented for examining effects of emotion in the detection of change in facial expression of emotion. The method was used in one experiment, reported here. Participants who were induced to feel happiness, sadness, or neutral emotion, saw computerized 100‐frame movies in which the first frame always showed a face expressing a specific emotion (e.g. happiness). The facial expression gradually became neutral over the course of the movie. Participants played the movie, changing the facial expression, and indicated the frame at which the initial expression was no longer present on the face. Emotion congruent expressions were perceived to persist longer than were emotion incongruent expressions. The findings are consistent with previous findings documenting enhanced perceptual processing of emotion congruent information. The value of the current technique, and the types of everyday situations that it might model are discussed. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effort-Shape and kinematic assessment of bodily expression of emotion during gait

The purpose of this study was to identify the movement characteristics associated with positive and negative emotions experienced during walking. Joy, contentment, anger, sadness, and neutral were elicited in 16 individuals, and motion capture data were collected as they walked while experiencing the emotions. Observers decoded the target emotions from side and front view videos of the walking trials; other observers viewed the same videos to rate the qualitative movement features using an Effort-Shape analysis. Kinematic analysis was used to quantify body posture and limb movements during walking with the different emotions. View did not affect decoding accuracy except for contentment, which was slightly enhanced with the front view. Walking speed was fastest for joy and anger, and slowest for sadness. Although walking speed may have accounted for increased amplitude of hip, shoulder, elbow, pelvis and trunk motion for anger and joy compared to sadness, neck and thoracic flexion with sadness, and trunk extension and shoulder depression with joy were independent of gait speed. More differences among emotions occurred with the Effort-Shape rather than the kinematic analysis, suggesting that observer judgments of Effort-Shape characteristics were more sensitive than the kinematic outcomes to differences among emotions.     

Social phobics do not misinterpret facial expression of emotion

Attentional biases in the processing of threatening facial expressions in social anxiety are well documented. It is generally assumed that these attentional biases originate in an evaluative bias: socially threatening information would be evaluated more negatively by socially anxious individuals. However, three studies have failed to evidence a negative evaluative bias in the processing of emotional facial expression (EFE) in socially anxious individuals. These studies however suffer from several methodological limitations that the present study has attempted to overcome. Twenty-one out-patients diagnosed with generalized social phobia have been compared to 20 out-patients diagnosed with another anxiety disorder and with 39 normal controls matched for gender, age and level of education. They had to decode on seven emotion intensity scales a set of 40 EFE whose intensity and emotional nature were manipulated. Although sufficient statistical power was ensured, no differences among groups could be found in terms of decoding accuracy, attributed emotion intensity, or reported difficulty of the task. Based on these findings as well as on other evidences, we propose that, if they exist, evaluative biases in social anxiety should be implicit and automatic and that they might be determined by the relevance of the stimulus to the person's concern rather than by the stimulus valence. The implications of these findings for the interpersonal processes involved in social phobia are discussed.     

面孔表情和声音情绪信息整合加工的脑机制

在现实生活中, 有效的情绪识别往往依赖于不同通道间的信息整合(如, 面孔、声音)。本文梳理相关研究认为, 面孔表情和声音情绪信息在早期知觉阶段即产生交互作用, 且初级感知觉皮层负责两者信息的编码; 而在晚期决策阶段, 杏仁核、颞叶等高级脑区完成对情绪信息内容的认知评估整合; 此外, 神经振荡活动在多个频段上的功能耦合促进了跨通道情绪信息整合。未来研究需要进一步探究两者整合是否与情绪冲突有关, 以及不一致的情绪信息在整合中是否有优势, 探明不同频段的神经振荡如何促进面孔表情和声音情绪信息整合, 以便更深入地了解面孔表情和声音情绪信息整合的神经动力学基础。