Sequential unfolding of novelty and pleasantness appraisals of odors: Evidence from facial electromyography and autonomic reactions.

We investigated the effects of odors on appraisal processes and consequent emotional responses. The main goal was to test whether an odor is detected as novel or familiar before it is evaluated as pleasant or unpleasant. Participants performed a recognition task in which they were presented with pairs of unpleasant or pleasant odors (sample and target odors). Within a pair, the sample and target were either identical or different to assess participants’ novelty detection; unpleasant and pleasant target odors were contrasted to examine participants’ appraisal of intrinsic pleasantness. We measured facial expressions using electromyography and physiological reactions using electrocardiogram and electrodermal activity in response to odors. The earliest effects on facial muscles and heart rate occurred in response to novelty detection. Later effects on facial muscles and heart rate were related to pleasantness evaluation. This study is the first to demonstrate the existence of a sequence of appraisal checks for odors eliciting emotional reaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Unpacking the cognitive architecture of emotion processes.

The results of 2 electroencephalographic studies confirm Component Process Model (CPM) predictions that different appraisal checks have specific brain state correlates, occur rapidly in a brief time window after stimulation, and produce results that occur in sequential rather than parallel fashion. The data are compatible with the assumption that early checks (novelty and intrinsic pleasantness) occur in an automatic, unconscious mode of processing, whereas later checks, specifically goal conduciveness, require more extensive, effortful, and controlled processing. Overall, this work, combined with growing evidence for the CPM's response patterning predictions concerning autonomic physiological signatures, facial muscle movements, and vocalization changes, suggests that this model provides an appropriate basis for the unpacking of the cognitive architecture of emotion and its computational modeling. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Affective Speech Elicited With a Computer Game.

To determine the degree to which emotional changes in speech reflect factors other than arousal, such as valence, the authors used a computer game to induce natural emotional speech. Voice samples were elicited following game events that were either conducive or obstructive to the goal of winning and were accompanied by either pleasant or unpleasant sounds. Acoustic analysis of the speech recordings of 30 adolescents revealed that mean energy, fundamental-frequency level, utterance duration, and the proportion of an utterance that was voiced varied with goal conduciveness; spectral energy distribution depended on manipulations of pleasantness; and pitch dynamics depended on the interaction of pleasantness and goal conduciveness. The results suggest that a single arousal dimension does not adequately characterize a number of emotion-related vocal changes, lending weight to multidimensional theories of emotional response patterning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of appraisal in human emotions: A cross-cultural study.

Several theories of emotion propose that emotional responses are largely determined by the way events are appraised. To determine whether the proposed dimensions of appraisal are consistent across cultures, 973 Ss from the US, Japan, Hong Kong, and the People's Republic of China were asked to describe emotional experiences. Few differences between the 3 cultures were observed on the more primitive dimensions (pleasantness, attentional activity, certainty, coping ability, and goal/need conduciveness) and on 2 of the more cognitively complex dimensions (legitimacy and norm/self compatibility). More substantial differences were observed on 3 other complex dimensions (control, responsibility, and anticipated effort). Considerable pan-cultural consistency was also observed in the dimensions of subjective experience of emotion and in the relations between these dimensions and cognitive appraisals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Faces versus patterns: Exploring aesthetic reactions using facial EMG.

We used facial EMG to examine reactions to the attractiveness of natural (faces) and artificial (abstract patterns) stimuli under long and short presentation durations. Attractive stimuli produced strong activations of the M. zygomaticus major muscle, indicating positive affective reactions; and unattractive stimuli produced strong activations of the M. corrugator supercili muscle, indicating negative affective reactions. Fluency effects, indicated by stronger activations of the M. zygomaticus major under the longer presentation duration were, however, only found for the abstract patterns. Moreover, the abstract patterns also were associated with more consistent activations over time than the faces, suggesting differences in the processes underlying the evaluation of faces and patterns. We discuss these results in terms of differences in appraisal processes between the two classes of stimuli—the greater biological, social, and sociosexual significance of faces trigger more complex appraisals than the abstract patterns. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Processes underlying congruent and incongruent facial reactions to emotional facial expressions.

The present electromyographic study is a first step toward shedding light on the involvement of affective processes in congruent and incongruent facial reactions to facial expressions. Further, empathy was investigated as a potential mediator underlying the modulation of facial reactions to emotional faces in a competitive, a cooperative, and a neutral setting. Results revealed less congruent reactions to happy expressions and even incongruent reactions to sad and angry expressions in the competition condition, whereas virtually no differences between the neutral and the cooperation condition occurred. Effects on congruent reactions were found to be mediated by cognitive empathy, indicating that the state of empathy plays an important role in the situational modulation of congruent reactions. Further, incongruent reactions to sad and angry faces in a competition setting were mediated by the emotional reaction of joy, supporting the assumption that incongruent facial reactions are mainly based on affective processes. Additionally, strategic processes (specifically, the goal to create and maintain a smooth, harmonious interaction) were found to influence facial reactions while being in a cooperative mindset. Now, further studies are needed to test for the generalizability of these effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond Surprise: The Puzzle of Infants' Expressive Reactions to Expectancy Violation.

The reactions of 58 infants to expectancy violation by digitally filtering the experimenter's voice were studied in a cross-sectional design for ages 5, 7, 9, 11-12, and 14 months. The results show that behavioral freezing and changes in gaze direction, but not facial or vocal expression, are reliable responses to expectancy violation. The pattern suggests that a transition in the infant's capacity for cognitive evaluation of novel and discrepant events may occur around age 9 months. These findings confirm the consistent failure to find prototypical facial surprise reactions in research on novel or impossible situations. Componential theories of emotion, which predict adaptive behavior patterns from appraisal processes, may provide clues for underlying mechanisms and generate hypotheses on age-related changes in emotional expression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Must interesting things be pleasant? A test of competing appraisal structures.

What makes something interesting? Appraisal research has proposed two appraisal structures for the emotion of interest. One model (Smith & Ellsworth, 1985) contends that appraised pleasantness is central to interest, whereas an alternative model (Silvia, 2005b) contends that pleasantness is unnecessary for interest. An experiment tested these competing predictions. Participants viewed calming and disturbing paintings, rated each picture for appraisals, and reported their experienced interest and pleasantness/ enjoyment. Within-person analyses found that (a) interest and pleasantness were essentially unrelated; (b) appraised novelty- complexity positively predicted interest, but negatively predicted pleasantness; and (c) disturbing pictures were highly interesting but unpleasant, whereas calming pictures were highly pleasant but uninteresting. The results thus strongly suggest that interesting things needn't be pleasant. Implications for in vivo (versus retrospective) tests of competing appraisal predictions are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subordinates' reactions to performance appraisal interviews: A test of feedback and goal-setting techniques.

Compared the effectiveness of 4 appraisal interview conditions with 60 corporate research team leaders and 203 subordinates. Three training conditions (feedback, feedback plus assigned goal setting, and assigned goal setting) and a control group were randomly structured for the team leaders. Pre- and posttraining evaluations of subordinates' reactions to appraisal interviews were obtained. The pretraining responses were factor analyzed, and 5 appraisal interview reaction factors emerged: Equity, Accuracy, Clarity, Motivational Impact, and Anxiety. MANOVA, t-tests and the Scheffé test indicated that some of the training interventions were superior to the control group with regard to Equity, Accuracy, and Clarity. Subordinate anxiety was higher in the 2 groups in which the leaders used assigned goal setting. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Multiple mechanisms in the perception of face gender: Effect of sex-irrelevant features.

Effects of sex-relevant and sex-irrelevant facial features on the evaluation of facial gender were investigated. Participants rated masculinity of 48 male facial photographs and femininity of 48 female facial photographs. Eighty feature points were measured on each of the facial photographs. Using a generalized Procrustes analysis, facial shapes were converted into multidimensional vectors, with the average face as a starting point. Each vector was decomposed into a sex-relevant subvector and a sex-irrelevant subvector which were, respectively, parallel and orthogonal to the main male–female axis. Principal components analysis (PCA) was performed on the sex-irrelevant subvectors. One principal component was negatively correlated with both perceived masculinity and femininity, and another was correlated only with femininity, though both components were orthogonal to the male–female dimension (and thus by definition sex-irrelevant). These results indicate that evaluation of facial gender depends on sex-irrelevant as well as sex-relevant facial features. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The combined effect of gaze direction and facial expression on cueing spatial attention.

Empirical evidence shows an effect of gaze direction on cueing spatial attention, regardless of the emotional expression shown by a face, whereas a combined effect of gaze direction and facial expression has been observed on individuals' evaluative judgments. In 2 experiments, the authors investigated whether gaze direction and facial expression affect spatial attention depending upon the presence of an evaluative goal. Disgusted, fearful, happy, or neutral faces gazing left or right were followed by positive or negative target words presented either at the spatial location looked at by the face or at the opposite spatial location. Participants responded to target words based on affective valence (i.e., positive/negative) in Experiment 1 and on letter case (lowercase/uppercase) in Experiment 2. Results showed that participants responded much faster to targets presented at the spatial location looked at by disgusted or fearful faces but only in Experiment 1, when an evaluative task was used. The present findings clearly show that negative facial expressions enhance the attentional shifts due to eye-gaze direction, provided that there was an explicit evaluative goal present. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

More than mere mimicry? The influence of emotion on rapid facial reactions to faces.

Within a second of seeing an emotional facial expression, people typically match that expression. These rapid facial reactions (RFRs), often termed mimicry, are implicated in emotional contagion, social perception, and embodied affect, yet ambiguity remains regarding the mechanism(s) involved. Two studies evaluated whether RFRs to faces are solely nonaffective motor responses or whether emotional processes are involved. Brow (corrugator, related to anger) and forehead (frontalis, related to fear) activity were recorded using facial electromyography (EMG) while undergraduates in two conditions (fear induction vs. neutral) viewed fear, anger, and neutral facial expressions. As predicted, fear induction increased fear expressions to angry faces within 1000 ms of exposure, demonstrating an emotional component of RFRs. This did not merely reflect increased fear from the induction, because responses to neutral faces were unaffected. Considering RFRs to be merely nonaffective automatic reactions is inaccurate. RFRs are not purely motor mimicry; emotion influences early facial responses to faces. The relevance of these data to emotional contagion, autism, and the mirror system-based perspectives on imitation is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Employee reactions to contextual and session components of performance appraisal.

A neglected area of performance appraisal research concerns the context within which the appraisal process occurs. For a sample of exempt employees, measures were developed that assessed system components of the appraisal context. The contribution of these variables (complexity, implementation, and follow-up) to the prediction of 2 measures of employee reactions to performance appraisal (review session satisfaction and appraisal system satisfaction) was compared with the contribution of a more frequently studied set of variables—supervisory behaviors in the review session. The relationship of a salary linkage variable to the 2 outcome criteria also was assessed. The supervisory session variables were related to session satisfaction, and the system contextual variables were primarily related to system satisfaction. Salary linkage was associated with system satisfaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A question of competence: The effects of competence and task feedback on intrinsic interest.

Examined whether competence information is the feedback feature that affects intrinsic motivation and whether perceived competence is the process responsible in 2 studies in which 174 undergraduates compared competence feedback with meaningful task feedback. In Study 1, positive competence feedback and task feedback were manipulated independently. Findings indicate that although positive feedback resulted in the highest level of perceived competence, both positive and task feedback enhanced interest individually. In Study 2, an ego-involvement manipulation emphasized competence prior to task engagement. Path-analytic techniques were used to identify 2 processes that mediated the effects of positive, negative, and task feedback on interest: perceived competence and personal valuation. Results indicate that perceived competence enhanced enjoyment only when performance quality was stressed by the ego-involvement manipulation. When competence was not made salient, subsequent interest depended more on the degree the individual personally valued involvement. Both studies indicate that competence information can affect both perceived competence and personal valuation. Feeling competent itself enhanced intrinsic motivation only if attaining competence was a primary goal of the task. (49 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Use of Ecological Momentary Assessment to Test Appraisal Theories of Emotion.

Although appraisal theories have received strong empirical support, there are methodological concerns about the research, including biased recall, heuristic responding, ethical issues, and weak and unrealistic induction of emotions in laboratories. To provide a more ecologically valid test of appraisal theories, the authors used ecological momentary assessment, in which the emotions and appraisals of Singaporean police officers were measured online over the course of an ordinary workday. The research focused on happiness. Support was obtained for predictions, demonstrating the generalizability of appraisal theories to a nonlaboratory setting and circumventing the shortcomings of previously used methodologies. Also, evidence was obtained that happiness was reported primarily in association with a specific combination of 3 relevant appraisals: high pleasantness, high perceived control, and low moral violation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

You're only as pretty as you feel: Facial expression as a determinant of physical attractiveness.

In Exp I, photos of 15 female target persons posing happy, neutral, and sad facial expressions were rated by 257 undergraduates for facial attractiveness using paired comparisons and Likert scales. Half of the raters were instructed to compensate for the effects of facial expression. Paired comparisons and Likert ratings were highly correlated. Target persons were less attractive when posing sad expressions than when posing neutral or happy expressions, which did not differ. In addition, independent ratings of 4 dimensions of the target persons' facial expression were obtained: pleasantness, surprise, intensity, and naturalness. Changes in these dimensions from the neutral to the happy and sad expressions and the corresponding changes in attractiveness were consistently related only to pleasantness, supporting the reinforcement-affect theory of attraction. Exp II, with 21 male undergraduates, related overall attractiveness to facial and bodily attractiveness. Both facial and bodily attractiveness were predictive of overall attractiveness, but the face was a slightly more powerful predictor. Results are discussed with respect to the stability of physical attractiveness, and alternative explanations of the mental-illness/physical-unattractiveness relation are proposed. (54 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subordinate participation and reactions to the appraisal interview.

Conducted 2 studies which examined relationships of subordinate participation in an appraisal interview to reactions to the appraisal and subordinate satisfaction. In Study 1, 25 managers rated their last appraisal on (a) helpfulness and (b) the Wexley et al measure of psychological participation, and then rated their overall satisfaction with supervision. The lack of significant intercorrelations among the psychological participation items indicated that different concepts of participation were represented. Items representing participation in interaction correlated significantly with appraisal helpfulness and satisfaction, while control of goal setting did not correlate significantly. In a 2nd field study, 56 hourly employees and 1st-level managers in a bank rated (a) their appraisal on certain characteristics, (b) their satisfaction with the appraisal, and (c) their job satisfaction. The invitation to participate was most predictive of appraisal satisfaction. The occurrence of goal setting correlated significantly with both appraisal and job satisfaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Feeling and facial efference: Implications of the vascular theory of emotion.

Is facial muscular movement capable of altering emotional state? Facial feedback theories answer this question in the affirmative but do not specify the intervening process. Cognitive appraisal theories do not address this question at all. The vascular theory of emotional efference (VTEE) holds that facial muscular movement, by its action on the cavernous sinus, may restrict venous flow and thereby influence cooling of the arterial blood supply to the brain. Subjective reactions resulting from facial action (phonetic utterance), resembling but unrelated to emotional efference, were found to differ in hedonic quality and to produce correlated changes in forehead temperature. Direct tests that introduced air into the nasal cavity revealed that cooled air was pleasurable, whereas warm air was aversive. It is conjectured that variations in cerebral temperature might influence the release and blocking of emotion-linked neurotransmitters—a consequence that would explain, in part, why some experiences are felt subjectively as pleasant and others as unpleasant. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anxiety-related bias in the classification of emotionally ambiguous facial expressions.

High- and low-trait socially anxious individuals classified the emotional expressions of photographic quality continua of interpolated ("morphed") facial images that were derived from combining 6 basic prototype emotional expressions to various degrees, with the 2 adjacent emotions arranged in an emotion hexagon. When fear was 1 of the 2 component emotions, the high-trait group displayed enhanced sensitivity for fear. In a 2nd experiment where a mood manipulation was incorporated, again, the high-trait group exhibited enhanced sensitivity for fear. The low-trait group was sensitive for happiness in the control condition. The moodmanipulated group had increased sensitivity for anger expressions, and trait anxiety did not moderate these effects. Interpretations of the results related to the classification of fearful expressions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)