Nonverbal behavior and the theory of emotion: The facial feedback hypothesis.

The facial feedback hypothesis (skeletal muscle feedback from facial expressions plays a causal role in regulating emotional experience and behavior) is an important part of several contemporary theories of emotion. A review of relevant research indicates that studies reporting support for this hypothesis have, without exception, used within-Ss designs, and therefore only a restricted version of the hypothesis has been tested. Also, the results of some of these studies must be questioned due to demand characteristics and other problems. It is suggested that visceral feedback may make a more direct contribution to emotional processes than facial feedback and that the "readout" functions of facial expressions are more important than any feedback functions. (51 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differential emotions theory and the facial feedback hypothesis of emotion activation: Comments on Tourangeau and Ellsworth's "The role of facial response in the experience of emotion."

Argues that R. Tourangeau and P. C. Ellsworth's (see record 1981-00499-001) version of the facial feedback hypothesis cannot be equated with the feedback hypothesis elaborated in differential emotions theory. There were also problems in research strategy and in drawing inferences from the data. Their procedure for manipulating facial expressions could not be expected to produce expression-specific emotions, and their conclusions did not adequately consider such uncontrolled factors as differences in voluntary and involuntary expression and the existence of micromomentary and covert expressions. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selection for universal facial emotion.

Facial expression is heralded as a communication system common to all human populations, and thus is generally accepted as a biologically based, universal behavior. Happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust are universally recognized and produced emotions, and communication of these states is deemed essential in order to navigate the social environment. It is puzzling, however, how individuals are capable of producing similar facial expressions when facial musculature is known to vary greatly among individuals. Here, the authors show that although some facial muscles are not present in all individuals, and often exhibit great asymmetry (larger or absent on one side), the facial muscles that are essential in order to produce the universal facial expressions exhibited 100% occurrence and showed minimal gross asymmetry in 18 cadavers. This explains how universal facial expression production is achieved, implies that facial muscles have been selected for essential nonverbal communicative function, and yet also accommodate individual variation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

False recognition of facial expressions of emotion: Causes and implications.

This article examines the importance of semantic processes in the recognition of emotional expressions, through a series of three studies on false recognition. The first study found a high frequency of false recognition of prototypical expressions of emotion when participants viewed slides and video clips of nonprototypical fearful and happy expressions. The second study tested whether semantic processes caused false recognition. The authors found that participants made significantly higher error rates when asked to detect expressions that corresponded to semantic labels than when asked to detect visual stimuli. Finally, given that previous research reported that false memories are less prevalent in younger children, the third study tested whether false recognition of prototypical expressions increased with age. The authors found that 67% of eight- to nine-year-old children reported nonpresent prototypical expressions of fear in a fearful context, but only 40% of 6- to 7-year-old children did so. Taken together, these three studies demonstrate the importance of semantic processes in the detection and categorization of prototypical emotional expressions. (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)     

Early adverse experiences and the neurobiology of facial emotion processing.

To examine the neurobiological consequences of early institutionalization, the authors recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) from 3 groups of Romanian children--currently institutionalized, previously institutionalized but randomly assigned to foster care, and family-reared children--in response to pictures of happy, angry, fearful, and sad facial expressions of emotion. At 3 assessments (baseline, 30 months, and 42 months), institutionalized children showed markedly smaller amplitudes and longer latencies for the occipital components P1, N170, and P400 compared to family-reared children. By 42 months, ERP amplitudes and latencies of children placed in foster care were intermediate between the institutionalized and family-reared children, suggesting that foster care may be partially effective in ameliorating adverse neural changes caused by institutionalization. The age at which children were placed into foster care was unrelated to their ERP outcomes at 42 months. Facial emotion processing was similar in all 3 groups of children; specifically, fearful faces elicited larger amplitude and longer latency responses than happy faces for the frontocentral components P250 and Nc. These results have important implications for understanding of the role that experience plays in shaping the developing brain. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social presence, facial feedback, and emotion.

To test whether facial expressions regulate the expressers' emotional experience, 59 high school and college students smelled pleasant and disgusting odors while reacting to them spontaneously, with a facial pose indicating that the odors were pleasant, or with a facial pose indicating that they were disgusting. In a result that supported the facial feedback hypothesis, Ss evaluated the odors consistently with their facial poses, but the odors themselves had a far greater impact on evaluations than did posing instructions. To test whether spontaneous and deceptive emotional expressions would be more effective as communication if the expresser were in the presence of another rather than alone, Ss smelled odors when they were alone or when seated next to another naive S who could not see them. Contrary to prediction, Ss were less successful facial communicators in the presence of another, as assessed by 7 undergraduate judges. In this condition they communicated their evaluations less when they were spontaneously reacting to the odors and leaked their evaluations more when they were trying to hide their expressions. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stumpf's cognitive-evaluative theory of emotion.

As a historical contribution to the current cognition–emotion debate in psychology, this article seeks (1) to bring to the readers' attention the largely ignored tradition of cognitive emotion theory within introspective psychology by reviewing what is probably the most clearly formulated cognitive emotion theory of this period, that proposed by C. Stumpf (1899) and (2) to point out the relevance of Stumpf's contributions to the psychology of emotions for the contemporary cognition-emotion discussion. It is suggested that Stumpf's version of a cognitive-evaluative theory of emotion deserves the serious attention of contemporary investigators and that several of his objections to noncognitive theories of emotion retain their force against modern versions of these theories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When familiarity breeds accuracy: Cultural exposure and facial emotion recognition.

Two studies provide evidence for the role of cultural familiarity in recognizing facial expressions of emotion. For Chinese located in China and the United States, Chinese Americans, and non-Asian Americans, accuracy and speed in judging Chinese and American emotions was greater with greater participant exposure to the group posing the expressions. Likewise, Tibetans residing in China and Africans residing in the United States were faster and more accurate when judging emotions expressed by host versus nonhost society members. These effects extended across generations of Chinese Americans, seemingly independent of ethnic or biological ties. Results suggest that the universal affect system governing emotional expression may be characterized by subtle differences in style across cultures, which become more familiar with greater cultural contact. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

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

Judgments of facial expressions of emotion in profile.

Despite the fact that facial expressions of emotion have signal value, there is surprisingly little research examining how that signal can be detected under various conditions, because most judgment studies utilize full-face, frontal views. We remedy this by obtaining judgments of frontal and profile views of the same expressions displayed by the same expressors. We predicted that recognition accuracy when viewing faces in profile would be lower than when judging the same faces from the front. Contrarily, there were no differences in recognition accuracy as a function of view, suggesting that emotions are judged equally well regardless of from what angle they are viewed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of facial response in the experience of emotion.

Facial expression and emotional stimuli were varied orthogonally in a 3?×?4 factorial design to test whether facial expression is necessary or sufficient to influence emotional experience. 123 undergraduates 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 4th group received no facial instructions. The Ss 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 Ss showed distinctive patterns of physiological arousal. Facial expression also tended to affect physiological responses in a manner consistent with an effort hypothesis. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Studies on anger and aggression: Implications for theories of emotion.

Describes a series of surveys on the everyday experience of anger, and a sample of data from these surveys is used to address a number of issues related to the social bases of anger. These issues include the connection between anger and aggression; the targets, instigations, and consequences of typical episodes of anger; the differences between anger and annoyance; and possible sex differences in the experience and/or expression of anger. However, the primary focus of the present paper is not on anger and aggression, but anger is used as a paradigm case to explore a number of issues in the study of emotion, including the advantages and limitations of laboratory research, the use of self-reports, the proper unit of analysis for the study of emotion, the relationship between human and animal emotion, and the authenticity of socially constituted emotional responses. (68 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prime theory: An integrated view of motivation and emotion.

Presents a theory that describes motivation and emotion as different aspects of a single process in which emotion involves the readout of motivational potential inherent in hierarchically organized primary motivational/emotional systems (primes). This theory involves an integrated way of thinking about emotion and motivation in their various physiological, expressive, and cognitive aspects. The most basic readout, Emotion I, involves adaptive-homeostatic functions. In species where communication about the state of certain primes became important, Emotion II, involving their outward expression, evolved. With cognition, a 3rd type of readout evolved, Emotion III, involving the direct experience of certain primes. A model of the interaction between primes and cognition is presented, and the unique role of language in human motivation-emotion is discussed. (4? p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intact recognition of facial emotion in Parkinson's disease.

Although the basal ganglia have been shown to be critical for the expression of emotion in prosody and facial expressions, it is unclear whether they are also critical for recognition of emotions. Selective pathology of parts of the basal ganglia is a hallmark of individuals with Parkinson's disease, and such patients have been examined in several studies of emotion. We examined 18 patients with Parkinson's disease (11 men, 7 women) and 13 age-, education-, gender ratio-, and IQ-matched normal controls on their ability to recognize emotions signaled by facial expressions. Parkinson's patients performed entirely normally on a quantitative task of recognizing emotional facial expressions. The findings do not support the notion that the sectors of basal ganglia that are dysfunctional in Parkinson's disease are essential for recognizing emotion in facial expressions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intensity judgments of emotion words: Implications for counselor training.

Investigated a category system of emotion words used in training beginning counselors to respond appropriately to client emotions. 10 experienced counselors (mean age 45.7 yrs), 32 counseling students (mean age 30.7 yrs), and 38 noncounselors (mean age 25.7 yrs) performed a free sort of 45 emotion words selected from categories labeled "depressed," "fearful," and "angry" proposed by D. C. Hammond et al (1977). Free sorts for each group of Ss were compared with the categories proposed by Hammond et al and with each other by means of quadratic assignment. Empirically derived intensity categories used by the Ss in each group also were identified. Comparisons were statistically significant, suggesting that Ss' categories were similar to the hypothesized categories. The categories used by each group, however, were more similar to each other than to the hypothesized categories. Fewer than 20% of the words were classified reliably across the 4 category systems. Use of the proposed category system in counselor training, therefore, would not be expected to improve counselors' ability to accurately identify and label client emotions. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Circadian preference and facial emotion recognition among rehabilitation inpatients.

Objective: Examined the role of circadian preference on facial emotion recognition among rehabilitation inpatients. Design: 47 patients with stroke and 24 patients with orthopedic diagnoses were screened for circadian preference and assessed at preferred and nonpreferred times of day on a computerized task of facial emotion recognition. Results: Disproportionate effects of time of day, relative to individual circadian preference, were found among persons with stroke-related cognitive impairment, compared with orthopedic patients, on facial emotion recognition. These differences were independent of differences in visual perception, subjective mood, or sleepiness. Conclusions: The circadian preference effect can be understood in terms of cognitive reserve. Among persons with acquired brain injury, the ability to access cognitive reserve appears to be affected by environmental variables (e.g., time of day), suggesting an additional component to existing models of reserve. Limited ability to recognize facial emotional expression in this population may present behavioral, occupational, and interpersonal challenges to community reintegration poststroke. Understanding this time-of-day effect adds to existing knowledge of factors affecting successful postacute outcomes in stroke rehabilitation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Placing the face in context: Cultural differences in the perception of facial emotion.

Two studies tested the hypothesis that in judging people's emotions from their facial expressions, Japanese, more than Westerners, incorporate information from the social context. In Study 1, participants viewed cartoons depicting a happy, sad, angry, or neutral person surrounded by other people expressing the same emotion as the central person or a different one. The surrounding people's emotions influenced Japanese but not Westerners' perceptions of the central person. These differences reflect differences in attention, as indicated by eye-tracking data (Study 2): Japanese looked at the surrounding people more than did Westerners. Previous findings on East-West differences in contextual sensitivity generalize to social contexts, suggesting that Westerners see emotions as individual feelings, whereas Japanese see them as inseparable from the feelings of the group. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Schachter theory of emotion: Two decades later.

Several of the less clearly defined aspects of S. Schachter and J. Singer's (1962) cognition-arousal theory of emotion are clarified, and empirical evidence pertaining to 3 major deductions from the theory is reviewed. It is concluded that only 1 of these deductions, claiming that misattributed arousal from an extraneous source intensifies emotional reactions, is adequately supported by the data. Little support is found for the 2nd hypothesis, that arousal reduction leads to a reduction in the intensity of emotional state. The status of the 3rd hypothesis, that misattribution of emotionally induced arousal to a neutral source results in a reduction of emotionality, is considered equivocal because of plausible alternative interpretations of the pertinent findings. There is no convincing evidence for Schachter and Singer's claim that arousal is a necessary condition for an emotional state, nor for the suggestion that emotional states may result from a labeling of unexplained arousal. It is suggested that the role of arousal in emotion has been overstated and that the available data support at best a rather attenuated version of Schachter's theory—that arousal feedback can have an intensifying effect on emotional states—and that this arousal–emotion relationship is mediated, in part, by causal attributions regarding the source of arousal. (6 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)