Continuities and changes in emotion expressions during brief separation at 13 and 18 months.

16 children were videotaped at 13 and 18 mo of age during the strange-situation procedure (M. D. Ainsworth et al, 1978). Facial expressions (interest, anger, sadness, and emotion blends) during the 2nd separation episode were coded using a system for identifying affect expressions by holistic judgments (Affex) developed by the 2nd author and colleagues (1980). Results show significant continuities in proportion of interest expressions, anger, emotion blends and frequency of expression changes. The major developmental change was seen in an age?×?emotion interaction, showing an increase in the use of facial expression blends or combinations from 13 to 18 mo. Results support the belief that patterns of emotion reflect early, persistent individual differences; they also reflect a developmental trend toward increasing complexity of emotional responses. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

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. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of mother–child emotion regulation strategies on children's expression of anger and sadness.

In a sample of 153 children from preschool through second grade, relations between the use of emotion regulation strategy and children's expression of anger and sadness were coded during an observational task in which children were intentionally disappointed in the presence of the mother. Multilevel modeling was used to examine strategy use and current and subsequent expressions of anger and sadness. Results indicate that mothers' use of attention refocusing and joint mother–child cognitive reframing lead to lower intensity of expressed anger and sadness. Younger children expressed more sadness than older children, and maternal attention refocusing was less successful among older children than younger ones. Implications of these results for assessing the socialization of emotion regulation in preschool and school-age children are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The young infant's ability to produce discrete emotion expressions.

Five studies investigated the young infant's ability to produce identifiable emotion expressions as defined in differential emotions theory. Trained judges applied emotion-specific criteria in selecting expression stimuli from videotape recordings of 54 1–9 mo old infants' responses to a variety of incentive events, ranging from playful interactions to the pain of inoculations. Four samples of untrained Ss (130 undergraduates and 62 female health service professionals) confirmed the social validity of infants' emotion expressions by reliably identifying expressions of interest, joy, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, and fear. Brief training resulted in significant increases in the accuracy of discrimination of infants' negative emotion expressions for low-accuracy Ss. Construct validity for the 8 emotion expressions identified by untrained Ss and for a consistent pattern of facial responses to unanticipated pain was provided by expression identifications derived from an objective, theoretically structured, anatomically based facial movement coding system. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Maternal emotional signaling: Its effect on the visual cliff behavior of 1-year-olds.

Studied the effect of maternal facial expressions of emotion on 108 12-mo-old infants in 4 studies. The deep side of a visual cliff was adjusted to a height that produced no clear avoidance and much referencing of the mother. In Study 1, 19 Ss viewed a facial expression of joy, while 17 Ss viewed one of fear. In Study 2, 15 Ss viewed interest, while 18 Ss viewed anger. In Study 3, 19 Ss viewed sadness. In Study 4, 23 Ss were used to determine whether the expressions influenced Ss' evaluation of an ambiguous situation or whether they were effective in controlling behavior merely because of their discrepancy or unexpectedness. Results show that Ss used facial expressions to disambiguate situations. If a mother posed joy or interest while S referenced, most Ss crossed the deep side. If a mother posed fear or anger, few Ss crossed. In the absence of any depth whatsoever, few Ss referenced the mother and those who did, while the mother was posing fear, hesitated but crossed nonetheless. It is suggested that facial expressions regulate behavior most clearly in contexts of uncertainty. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's and adults' recognition of spontaneous and posed emotional expressions in young children.

Investigated the degree to which 4–5 yr olds (n?=?48) can enact expressions of emotion recognizable by peers and adults; the study also examined whether accuracy of recognition was a function of age and whether the expression was posed or spontaneous. Adults (n?=?103) were much more accurate than children in recognizing neutral states, slightly more accurate in recognizing happiness and anger, and equally accurate in recognizing sadness. Children's spontaneous displays of happiness were more recognizable than posed displays, but for other emotions there was no difference between the recognizability of posed and spontaneous expressions. Children were highly accurate in identifying the facial expressions of happiness, sadness, and anger displayed by their peers. Sex and ethnicity of the child whose emotion was displayed interacted to influence only adults' recognizability of anger. Results are discussed in terms of the social learning and cognitive developmental factors influencing (a) adults' and children's decoding (recognition) of emotional expressions in young children and (b) encoding (posing) of emotional expressions by young children. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Patterns of brain electrical activity during facial signs of emotion in 10-month-old infants.

This study examined electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetries during the presence of discrete facial signs of emotion. Thirty-five 10-month-old infants were tested in a standard stranger- and mother-approach paradigm that included a brief separation from their mother. Infant facial expression was videotaped, and brain electrical activity from left and right frontal and parietal regions was recorded. The videotapes were coded with two different discrete facial coding systems. Artifact-free periods of EEG were extracted that were coincident with the expression of the emotions of joy, anger, and sadness. The data revealed different patterns of EEG asymmetry depending on the type of facial expression and vocal expression of affect that was observed. Expressions of joy that involved facial actions of both zygomatic and orbicularis oculi were seen more often in response to mother approach, whereas smiles that did not involve the action of orbicularis oculi were seen more often in response to approach of the stranger. The former type of smile was associated with relative left frontal activation, whereas the latter type was associated with right frontal activation. Facial expressions of anger and sadness exhibited in the absence of crying were associated with left frontal activation, whereas these same facial expressions during crying were associated with right frontal activation. These data underscore the usefulness of EEG measures of hemispheric activation in differentiating among emotional states associated with differences in facial and vocalic expressivity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Infants' responses to their mothers' expressions of joy and sadness.

On separate visits to the laboratory, 36 nine-month-old infants (18 boys and 18 girls) watched their mothers express joy or sadness, facially and vocally, during a 2-min emotion-induction period. After the induction period, mothers continued to express joy or sadness while their infants played with four sets of toys. Infant emotion expressions were analyzed using the Max (Izard, 1979a) and Affex (Izard, Dougherty, & Hembree, 1983) coding systems, and infant play behavior was coded with a system developed by Belsky and Most (1981). The amount of time that the infants looked at their mothers was also measured. Findings were generally consistent with differential emotions theory (Izard, 1979b). The infants expressed more joy and looked longer at their mothers during the joy condition and they showed more sadness, anger, and gaze aversion during the sadness condition. The infants engaged in more play behavior in the joy condition than in the sadness condition. Regression analyses revealed several significant relations between infants' gaze behavior, emotion expressions, and play behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Negative affect, emotional expression, and forgetting in young infants.

Ss were trained for 3 days to move an overhead mobile containing 10 objects, changed to 2 objects during the 3rd session. The change resulted in crying in half of the Ss. A retention test was given 1 or 7 days later. Measures of facial expressions during nonreinforcement phases at the outset of each session showed that interest was the predominant expression. Interest decreased and surprise increased during the 3rd session and continued into the 4th session for Ss in the 1-day retention group. When shifted to the 2-object mobile, criers exhibited decreasing interest and increasing anger and sadness as their state escalated toward crying. Consistent with earlier research, all Ss showed retention at 1 day, but only noncriers exhibited retention at 7 days. Criers displayed significantly more anger than noncriers during the 1- but not the 7-day retention test. Data suggest that the negative affect induced by the violation of infants' learned expectancies for a previously afforded reinforcer is stored as part of their memory of the experience and that components of this affective memory may be retrieved when the target memory is retrieved. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion-specific effects of facial expressions and postures on emotional experience.

A total of 74 Ss were induced to adopt expressions of fear, anger, disgust, and sadness in Experiment 1. Each expression significantly increased feelings of its particular emotion compared with at least two of the others, a result that cannot be explained by a single dimension. Postures should play the same role in emotional experience as facial expressions. However, the demonstrated effects of postures (Riskind, 1984) could also represent a single dimension of variation. In Experiment 2, subjects were induced to adopt postures characteristic of fear, anger, and sadness. Again, the effects were specific to the postures. These two studies indicate that emotional behavior produces changes in feelings that specifically match the behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond simple pessimism: Effects of sadness and anger on social perception.

In keeping with cognitive appraisal models of emotion, it was hypothesized that sadness and anger would exert different influences on causal judgments. Two experiments provided initial support for this hypothesis. Sad Ss perceived situationally-caused events as more likely (Exp 1) and situational forces more responsible for an ambiguous event (Exp 2) than angry Ss, who, in contrast, perceived events caused by humans as more likely and other people as more responsible. Exps 3, 4, and 5 showed that the experience of these emotions, rather than their cognitive constituents, mediates these effects. The nonemotional exposure to situational or human agency information did not influence causal judgments (Exp 3), whereas the induction of sadness and anger without explicit agency information did (Exps 4 and 5). Discussion is focused on the influence of emotion on social judgment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The expression of determination: Similarities between anger and approach-related positive affect.

In this set of studies, we examine the perceptual similarities between emotions that share either a valence or a motivational direction. Determination is a positive approach-related emotion, whereas anger is a negative approach-related emotion. Thus, determination and anger share a motivational direction but are opposite in valence. An implemental mind-set has previously been shown to produce high-approach-motivated positive affect. Thus, in Study 1, participants were asked to freely report the strongest emotion they experienced during an implemental mind-set. The most common emotion reported was determination. On the basis of this result, we compared the facial expression of determination with that of anger. In Study 2, naive judges were asked to identify photographs of facial expressions intended to express determination, along with photographs intended to express basic emotions (joy, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, neutral). Correct identifications of intended determination expressions were correlated with misidentifications of the expressions as anger but not with misidentifications as any other emotion. This suggests that determination, a high-approach-motivated positive affect, is perceived as similar to anger. In Study 3, naive judges quantified the intensity of joy, anger, and determination expressed in photographs. The intensity of perceived determination was directly correlated with the intensity of perceived anger (a high-approach-motivated negative affect) and was inversely correlated with the intensity of perceived joy (a low-approach-motivated positive affect). These results demonstrate perceptual similarity between emotions that share a motivational direction but differ in valence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of arousal on judgments of others' emotions.

Previous evidence indicates that arousal cues information from memory associated with a similar level of arousal and that people will base judgments on the information that is most available to them. The present authors hypothesized that (a) increases in arousal would increase the likelihood that Ss would interpret positive statements and positive facial expressions as indicating a positive emotion associated with high arousal (joy) rather than a positive emotion associated with low arousal (serenity), and (b) increases in arousal would increase the likelihood that Ss would interpret negative statements and negative expressions as indicating a negative emotion associated with high arousal (anger) rather than a negative emotion associated with low arousal (sadness or depression). Two studies, with 37 adults and 38 students, tested the hypotheses. Results of each study support the 1st but not the 2nd hypothesis. Explanations for why arousal had the predicted effects on positive but not on negative stimuli are offered. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Facial expressions of emotion: Does the prototype represent central tendency, frequency of instantiation, or an ideal?

Examines whether typicality of facial expressions (FE) of emotion is predicted best by their values on an ideal dimension (suitability to express a particular emotion), their frequency of instantiation (FI) as an expression of a particular emotion, or their deviation from the central tendency (CT) of the respective FE category. The subjects (Ss) judged FE line drawings of anger, disgust, happiness, sadness, and surprise differing in intensity. In study 1, 82 Ss (mean age 24.4 yrs) divided into four independent groups were tested: the typicality group, the FI group, the ideal group, and the CT group. The Ss in Study 2 (mean age 23.5 yrs) sought to replicate Study 1 with a different operation of typicality: "how good an example" an FE is for the respective emotion category. The results strongly indicate that they are structured like goal-derived categories, where typicality of members varies according to their suitability to obtain a certain goal. This indicates that suitability to express the respective emotion is highly salient in people's representations of categories of FEs of emotion and has become the standard by which typicality is judged. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

From unresolved anger to sadness: Identifying physiological correlates.

This study was designed to identify physiological correlates of unresolved anger and sadness, and the shift between these emotions, in a context similar to that of emotion-focused, experiential psychotherapy. Twenty-seven university students reporting unresolved anger toward an attachment figure were induced to experience and express unresolved anger and sadness. Simultaneously, their heart rate variability, finger temperature, and skin conductance levels were monitored. The sequence of emotion induction was counterbalanced. Sympathetic activation, as reflected by finger temperature, increased significantly from anger to sadness, but not from sadness to anger. A follow-up study (N=36) of participants induced to experience and express either anger or sadness in both the 1st and 2nd inductions ruled out an Anger×Time interaction and a sadness-sadness effect, suggesting that the increase in sympathetic activation from anger to sadness was a function of the unique sequence of emotions. These findings represent a first step toward using physiological measures to capture shifts from unresolved anger to vulnerable primary emotions during a therapy-like task and provide evidence for the purported mechanism underlying unresolved anger. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expressions faciales émotionnelles spontanées dynamiques et statiques: comparaison d'études de jugement catégoriel et dimensionnel.

Studied differences between dimensional and categorical judgments of static and dynamic spontaneous facial expressions of emotion. In the 1st part of the study, 25 university students presented with either static or dynamic facial expressions of emotions (i.e., joy, fear, anger, surprise, disgust, and sadness) and asked to evaluate the similarity of 21 pairs of stimuli on a 7-point scale. Results were analyzed using a multidimensional scaling procedure. In the 2nd part of the study, Ss were asked to categorize the expressed emotions according to their intensity. Differences in the categorization of static and dynamic stimuli were analyzed. Results from the similarity rating task and the categorization task were compared. (English abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult judgments and fine-grained analysis of infant facial expressions: Testing the validity of a priori coding formulas.

Three studies tested whether infant facial expressions selected to fit Max formulas (C. E. Izard, 1983) for discrete emotions are recognizable signals of those emotions. Forced-choice emotion judgments (Study 1) and emotion ratings (Study 2) by naive Ss fit Max predictions for slides of infant joy, interest, surprise, and distress, but Max fear, anger, sadness, and disgust expressions in infants were judged as distress or as emotion blends in both studies. Ratings of adult facial expressions (Study 2 only) fit a priori classifications. In Study 3, the facial muscle components of faces shown in Studies 1 and 2 were coded with the Facial Action Coding System (FACS; P. Ekman and W. V. Friesen, 1978) and Baby FACS (H. Oster and D. Rosenstein, in press). Only 3 of 19 Max-specified expressions of discrete negative emotions in infants fit adult prototypes. Results indicate that negative affect expressions are not fully differentiated in infants and that empirical studies of infant facial expressions are needed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Facial expressions of emotion and psychopathology in adolescent boys.

On the basis of the widespread belief that emotions underpin psychological adjustment, the authors tested 3 predicted relations between externalizing problems and anger, internalizing problems and fear and sadness, and the absence of externalizing problems and social–moral emotion (embarrassment). Seventy adolescent boys were classified into 1 of 4 comparison groups on the basis of teacher reports using a behavior problem checklist: internalizers, externalizers, mixed (both internalizers and externalizers), and nondisordered boys. The authors coded the facial expressions of emotion shown by the boys during a structured social interaction. Results supported the 3 hypotheses: (a) Externalizing adolescents showed increased facial expressions of anger, (b) on 1 measure internalizing adolescents showed increased facial expressions of fear, and (c) the absence of externalizing problems (or nondisordered classification) was related to increased displays of embarrassment. Discussion focused on the relations of these findings to hypotheses concerning the role of impulse control in antisocial behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's expression of negative affect: Reasons and methods.

This study examined the influence of socialization figures (mother, father, best friend, medium friend), emotion type (anger, sadness, physical pain), age, and gender on 66 2nd and 71 5th-grade children's reasons for and methods of affect expression. Children reported expressing sadness in order to receive support, expressing pain because they perceived it was uncontrollable, and regulating anger due to negative consequences. Girls reported using verbal means to communicate emotion, whereas boys cited mild aggressive methods. Younger children indicated expressing emotion to receive assistance because they lack regulation skills, and to adhere to norms. Children expressed emotion in passive ways to fathers more than peers, and mothers were deemed by younger children as most accepting of displays of anger. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Affect bursts: Dynamic patterns of facial expressions": Correction to Krumhuber and Scherer (2011).

Reports an error in "Affect bursts: Dynamic patterns of facial expression" by Eva G. Krumhuber and Klaus R. Scherer (Emotion, 2011, np). There were several errors in Table 1, and in Table 4 spaces were omitted from the rows between data for anger, fear, sadness, joy, and relief. All versions of this article have been corrected, and the corrections to Table 1 are provided in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2011-12872-001.) Affect bursts consist of spontaneous and short emotional expressions in which facial, vocal, and gestural components are highly synchronized. Although the vocal characteristics have been examined in several recent studies, the facial modality remains largely unexplored. This study investigated the facial correlates of affect bursts that expressed five different emotions: anger, fear, sadness, joy, and relief. Detailed analysis of 59 facial actions with the Facial Action Coding System revealed a reasonable degree of emotion differentiation for individual action units (AUs). However, less convergence was shown for specific AU combinations for a limited number of prototypes. Moreover, expression of facial actions peaked in a cumulative-sequential fashion with significant differences in their sequential appearance between emotions. When testing for the classification of facial expressions within a dimensional approach, facial actions differed significantly as a function of the valence and arousal level of the five emotions, thereby allowing further distinction between joy and relief. The findings cast doubt on the existence of fixed patterns of facial responses for each emotion, resulting in unique facial prototypes. Rather, the results suggest that each emotion can be portrayed by several different expressions that share multiple facial actions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)