The facial feedback hypothesis: Methodological concerns and new supporting evidence

Support for the weak version of the facial feedback hypothesis has been obtained repeatedly with the dynamic pose paradigm. In contrast, support for the strong version, which is tested with the static pose paradigm, has been inconsistent. We attributed this to methodological limitations in some studies rather than to problems intrinsic to the static pose paradigm. Utilizing a methodology that improved upon the hypothesized limitations, we obtained the facial feedback effect for the static poses of joy and anger with 142 male undergraduate students. The effect was uniform across levels of stimulus intensity and stimulus affect. Facial feedback did not vary with skills in nonverbal affective communication, self-monitoring, and the ability to form mental images.This article is based on a thesis submitted by the first author to California State University, Long Beach, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the M.A. degree. The second author was chair of the thesis committee. John Jung and Robert W. Kapche were members of the thesis committee; their contributions to the thesis are gratefully acknowledged. The first author is currently enrolled in the Ph.D. program in clinical-community psychology at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29108. This work was described in a paper presented at the meeting of the Western Psychological Association, Sacramento, April 1982.