Facial expressions of emotion influence interpersonal trait inferences

Theorists have argued that facial expressions of emotion serve the interpersonal function of allowing one animal to predict another's behavior. Humans may extend these predictions into the indefinite future, as in the case of trait inference. The hypothesis that facial expressions of emotion (e.g., anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness) affect subjects' interpersonal trait inferences (e.g., dominance and affiliation) was tested in two experiments. Subjects rated the dispositional affiliation and dominance of target faces with either static or apparently moving expressions. They inferred high dominance and affiliation from happy expressions, high dominance and low affiliation from angry and disgusted expressions, and low dominance from fearful and sad expressions. The findings suggest that facial expressions of emotion convey not only a target's internal state, but also differentially convey interpersonal information, which could potentially seed trait inference.This article constitutes a portion of my dissertation research at Stanford University, which was supported by a National Science Foundation Fellowship and an American Psychological Association Dissertation Award. Thanks to Nancy Alvarado, Chris Dryer, Paul Ekman, Bertram Malle, Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Steven Sutton, Robert Zajonc, and more anonymous reviewers than I can count on one hand for their comments.     

The Contribution of Emotion Perceptions and Their Overgeneralizations to Trait Impressions

This study tested the hypothesis derived from ecological theory that adaptive social perceptions of emotion expressions fuel trait impressions. Moreover, it was predicted that these impressions would be overgeneralized and perceived in faces that were not intentionally posing expressions but nevertheless varied in emotional demeanor. To test these predictions, perceivers viewed 32 untrained targets posing happy, surprised, angry, sad, and fearful expressions and formed impressions of their dominance and affiliation. When targets posed happiness and surprise they were perceived as high in dominance and affiliation whereas when they posed anger they were perceived as high in dominance and low in affiliation. When targets posed sadness and fear they were perceived as low in dominance. As predicted, many of these impressions were overgeneralized and attributed to targets who were not posing expressions. The observed effects were generally independent of the impact of other facial cues (i.e., attractiveness and babyishness).     

The Intensity of Emotional Facial Expressions and Decoding Accuracy

The influence of the physical intensity of emotional facial expressions on perceived intensity and emotion category decoding accuracy was assessed for expressions of anger, disgust, sadness, and happiness. The facial expressions of two men and two women posing each of the four emotions were used as stimuli. Six different levels of intensity of expression were created for each pose using a graphics morphing program. Twelve men and 12 women rated each of the 96 stimuli for perceived intensity of the underlying emotion and for the qualitative nature of the emotion expressed. The results revealed that perceived intensity varied linearly with the manipulated physical intensity of the expression. Emotion category decoding accuracy varied largely linearly with the manipulated physical intensity of the expression for expressions of anger, disgust, and sadness. For the happiness expressions only, the findings were consistent with a categorical judgment process. Sex of encoder produced significant effects for both dependent measures. These effects remained even after possible gender differences in encoding were controlled for, suggesting a perceptual bias on the part of the decoders.     

Emotion Recognition in Nonverbal Face-to-Face Communication

The perception of emotional facial expressions may activate corresponding facial muscles in the receiver, also referred to as facial mimicry. Facial mimicry is highly dependent on the context and type of facial expressions. While previous research almost exclusively investigated mimicry in response to pictures or videos of emotional expressions, studies with a real, face-to-face partner are still rare. Here we compared facial mimicry of angry, happy, and sad expressions and emotion recognition in a dyadic face-to-face setting. In sender-receiver dyads, we recorded facial electromyograms in parallel. Senders communicated to the receivers—with facial expressions only—the emotions felt during specific personal situations in the past, eliciting anger, happiness, or sadness. Receivers mostly mimicked happiness, to a lesser degree, sadness, and anger as the least mimicked emotion. In actor-partner interdependence models we showed that the receivers’ own facial activity influenced their ratings, which increased the agreement between the senders’ and receivers’ ratings for happiness, but not for angry and sad expressions. These results are in line with the Emotion Mimicry in Context View, holding that humans mimic happy expressions according to affiliative intentions. The mimicry of sad expressions is less intense, presumably because it signals empathy and might imply personal costs. Direct anger expressions are mimicked the least, possibly because anger communicates threat and aggression. Taken together, we show that incidental facial mimicry in a face-to-face setting is positively related to the recognition accuracy for non-stereotype happy expressions, supporting the functionality of facial mimicry.     

Matsumoto and Ekman's Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion (JACFEE): Reliability Data and Cross-National Differences

Substantial research has documented the universality of several emotional expressions. However, recent findings have demonstrated cultural differences in level of recognition and ratings of intensity. When testing cultural differences, stimulus sets must meet certain requirements. Matsumoto and Ekman's Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion (JACFEE) is the only set that meets these requirements. The purpose of this study was to obtain judgment reliability data on the JACFEE, and to test for possible cross-national differences in judgments as well. Subjects from Hungary, Japan, Poland, Sumatra, United States, and Vietnam viewed the complete JACFEE photo set and judged which emotions were portrayed in the photos and rated the intensity of those expressions. Results revealed high agreement across countries in identifying the emotions portrayed in the photos, demonstrating the reliability of the JACFEE. Despite high agreement, cross-national differences were found in the exact level of agreement for photos of anger, contempt, disgust, fear, sadness, and surprise. Cross-national differences were also found in the level of intensity attributed to the photos. No systematic variation due to either preceding emotion or presentation order of the JACFEE was found. Also, we found that grouping the countries into a Western/Non-Western dichotomy was not justified according to the data. Instead, the cross-national differences are discussed in terms of possible sociopsychological variables that influence emotion judgments.     

On the meaning and implications of facial prominence

Archer et al. (1983) found that visual depictions (e.g., photographs) of men tend to show more face and less of the body (a characteristic that was termed high face-ism) than visual depictions of women. Furthermore, photographs (of both men and women) high in face-ism elicited more favorable impressions than photographs low in face-ism. The present studies examined possible reasons for sex differences in face-ism and their implications concerning the effects of high and low face-ism on interpersonal perception. Study 1 showed that the greater face-ism in photographs of men was less pronounced when the photographs were taken from periodicals that are oriented toward women's issues. Study 2 showed that photographs high in face-ism received higher ratings on dominance, a dimension related to masculinity, but not on positivity, a dimension related to femininity. This study also indicated that facial expressions provided more information about degrees of positivity while body cues provided more information about dominance and submission. Consistent with these latter results, Study 3 showed that amateur drawings portraying kind or hostile persons showed more of the face while drawings presenting dominant or weak persons showed more of the body. The two phenomena—the relationship of high face-ism with impressions of high dominance and the different types of information transmitted by the face and body—were considered in the discussion.The author would like to express his appreciation to Diana R. Satin and BiancaMaria (Mia) Penati for their assistance with this project.     

Adult Perceptions of Positive and Negative Infant Emotional Expressions

Adults' perceptions provide information about the emotional meaning of infant facial expressions. This study asks whether similar facial movements influence adult perceptions of emotional intensity in both infant positive (smile) and negative (cry face) facial expressions. Ninety‐five college students rated a series of naturally occurring and digitally edited images of infant facial expressions. Naturally occurring smiles and cry faces involving the co‐occurrence of greater lip movement, mouth opening, and eye constriction, were rated as expressing stronger positive and negative emotion, respectively, than expressions without these 3 features. Ratings of digitally edited expressions indicated that eye constriction contributed to higher ratings of positive emotion in smiles (i.e., in Duchenne smiles) and greater eye constriction contributed to higher ratings of negative emotion in cry faces. Stronger mouth opening contributed to higher ratings of arousal in both smiles and cry faces. These findings indicate a set of similar facial movements are linked to perceptions of greater emotional intensity, whether the movements occur in positive or negative infant emotional expressions. This proposal is discussed with reference to discrete, componential, and dynamic systems theories of emotion.     

Marital Conflict and Children's Emotions: The Development of an Anger Organization

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between anger‐based marital conflict and the development of an anger organization in children between the ages of 4 and 8 years old. Anger organization was defined as an adversarial approach to relationships demonstrated through (a) short‐term anger expressions during social interaction and (b) aggression in relationships. Seventy‐one children from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, their mothers, and their teachers participated in the study. Mothers completed questionnaires on anger‐based marital conflict and on children's aggression. Sociometric ratings of anger and aggression were obtained from peers. Teachers supplied reports of children's aggression. Children's short‐term emotional expression and the circumstances that elicited emotions were observed during peer interaction. Anger‐based marital conflict was found to be strongly associated with peer, maternal, and teacher reports of aggression, but not with reports of internalizing symptomatology. Anger‐based marital conflict was also associated with short‐term anger expressions, but not with short‐term expressions of sadness. I argue that children develop an emotional organization in which anger predominates when they are exposed to high levels of anger‐based marital conflict.     

Mimicry and the Judgment of Emotional Facial Expressions

Lipps (1907) presented a model of empathy which had an important influence on later formulations. According to Lipps, individuals tend to mimic an interaction partner's behavior, and this nonverbal mimicry induces—via a feedback process—the corresponding affective state in the observer. The resulting shared affect is believed to foster the understanding of the observed person's self. The present study tested this model in the context of judgments of emotional facial expressions. The results confirm that individuals mimic emotional facial expressions, and that the decoding of facial expressions is accompanied by shared affect. However, no evidence that emotion recognition accuracy or shared affect are mediated by mimicry was found. Yet, voluntary mimicry was found to have some limited influence on observer' s assessment of the observed person's personality. The implications of these results with regard to Lipps' original hypothesis are discussed.     

Judging Facial Emotion Expressions in Context: The Influence of Culture and Self-Construal Orientation

We assessed the impact of social context on the judgment of emotional facial expressions as a function of self-construal and decoding rules. German and Greek participants rated spontaneous emotional faces shown either alone or surrounded by other faces with congruent or incongruent facial expressions. Greek participants were higher in interdependence than German participants. In line with cultural decoding rules, Greek participants rated anger expressions less intensely and sad and disgust expressions more intensely. Social context affected the ratings by both groups in different ways. In the more interdependent culture (Greece) participants perceived anger least intensely when the group showed neutral expressions, whereas sadness expressions were rated as most intense in the absence of social context. In the independent culture (Germany) a group context (others expressing anger or happiness) additionally amplified the perception of angry and happy expressions. In line with the notion that these effects are mediated by more holistic processing linked to higher interdependence, this difference disappeared when we controlled for interdependence on the individual level. The findings confirm the usefulness of considering both country level and individual level factors when studying cultural differences.     

Not All Outgroups Are Equal: Group Type May Influence Group Effect on Matching Behavior

People tend to match the behaviors and expressions of ingroup members or cooperative others more than outgroup members and competitors. We call this the group effect on interpersonal matching. Our review examines different types of groups to identify when different psychological factors may influence this group effect on matching. Specifically, research demonstrates that affiliation goals increase interpersonal matching; however, other factors such as attention and emotional reaction also appear important. We argue that which of these factors enhance the group effect varies depending on whether group categories are based on minimal, incidental, interdependent, or socially consequential differences. In addition, which expressions (e.g., smiles vs. frowns) are matched varies across group types. To facilitate more directed research, this review describes three key factors and provides a framework to consider which may be involved at different levels of groups. By examining different types of groups, a more complete understanding of how group differences increase or decrease interpersonal matching can be uncovered, providing additional insight into the factors influencing interpersonal matching.     

Content-masking methods as determinants of results of studies of nonverbal communication

The present study was designed to determine whether the technique used to control the semantic content of emotional communications might influence the results of research on the effects of gender, age, and particular affects on accuracy of decoding tone of voice. Male and female college and elementary school students decoded a 48-item audio tape-recording of emotional expressions encoded by two children and two college students. Six emotions — anger, fear, happiness, jealousy, pride and sadness — were expressed in two types of content-standard messages, namely letters of the alphabet and an affectively neutral sentence. The results of the study indicate that different methods for controlling content can indeed influence the results of studies of determinants of decoding performance. Overall, subjects demonstrated greater accuracy when decoding emotions expressed in the standard sentence than when decoding emotions embedded in letters of the alphabet. A technique by emotion interaction, however, revealed that this was especially true for the purer emotions of anger, fear, happiness and sadness. Subjects identified the less pure emotions of jealousy and pride relatively more accurately when these emotions were embedded in the alphabet technique. The implications of these results for research concerning the vocal communication of affect are briefly discussed.Preparation of this article was supported in part by the National Science Foundation.     

Maternal Punitive Reactions to Children's Negative Emotions and Young Adult Trait Anger: Effect of Gender and Emotional Closeness

The current study tested whether young adult's recollected reports of their mother's punitive reactions to their negative emotions in childhood predicted anger expression in young adulthood and whether emotional closeness weakens this association. Further, a three-way interaction was tested to examine whether emotional closeness is a stronger protective factor for young women than for young men. Results revealed a significant three-way interaction (gender × emotional closeness × maternal punitive reactions). For young men, maternal punitive reactions to negative emotions were directly associated with increased anger expressions. Maternal punitive reactions to young women's negative emotions in childhood were associated with increased anger in adulthood only when they reported low maternal emotional closeness. Findings suggest that maternal emotional closeness may serve as a buffer against the negative effects of maternal punitive reactions for women's anger expression in young adulthood.     

When Memory is Better for Out-group Faces: On Negative Emotions and Gender Roles

Memory for in-group faces tends to be better than memory for out-group faces. Ackerman et al. (Psychological Science 17:836–840, 2006) found that this effect reverses when male faces display anger, supposedly due to their functional value in signaling intergroup threat. We explored the generalizability of this reverse effect. White participants viewed Black and White male or female faces displaying angry, fearful, or neutral expressions. Recognition accuracy for White male faces was better than for Black male faces when faces were neutral, but this reversed when the faces displayed anger or fear. For female targets, Black faces were generally better recognized than White faces, and female faces were better remembered when they displayed anger rather than fear, whereas male faces were better remembered when they displayed fear rather than anger. These findings are difficult to reconcile with a functional account and suggest (a) that the processing of male out-group faces is influenced by negative emotional expressions in general; and (b) that gender role expectations lead to differential remembering of male and female faces as a function of emotional expression.     

Infant Smiling Dynamics and Perceived Positive Emotion

To better understand early positive emotional expression, automated software measurements of facial action were supplemented with anatomically based manual coding. These convergent measurements were used to describe the dynamics of infant smiling and predict perceived positive emotional intensity. Over the course of infant smiles, degree of smile strength varied with degree of eye constriction (cheek raising, the Duchenne marker), which varied with degree of mouth opening. In a series of three rating studies, automated measurements of smile strength and mouth opening predicted naïve (undergraduate) observers’ continuous ratings of video clips of smile sequences, as well as naïve and experienced (parent) ratings of positive emotion in still images from the sequences. An a priori measure of smile intensity combining anatomically based manual coding of both smile strength and mouth opening predicted positive emotion ratings of the still images. The findings indicate the potential of automated and fine-grained manual measurements of facial actions to describe the course of emotional expressions over time and to predict perceptions of emotional intensity.     

Sex Related Factors in the Perception of Threatening Facial Expressions

This study replicated and extended previously reported sex differences involving both viewer and target in the recognition of threatening facial expressions. Based on the assumption that the evolved cognitive mechanisms mediating anger recognition would have been designed by natural selection to operate quickly in the interests of survival, brief tachistoscopic presentation of stimulus photographs was used. Additionally, in contrast to prior published studies, the statistical methods of signal detection research were used to control for the confounding effects of non-random guessing. The main hypothesis, that anger posed by males would be more accurately perceived than anger posed by females, was supported. A secondary hypothesis, that female-posed anger would be more accurately perceived by women than by men, received partial support. Testosterone levels, measured inferentially in terms of diurnal cycles, failed to show the hypothesized positive relationship to accuracy of anger perception.     

Emotional traits and recognition of facial expression of emotion

The relationship between an individual's habitual, emotional dispositions or tendencies — an aspect of personality — and his ability to recognize facially expressed emotions was explored. Previous studies have used global scores of recognition accuracy across several emotions, but failed to examine the relationship between emotion traits and recognition of specific emotion expressions. In the present study, these more specific relationships were examined. Results indicated that females with an inhibited-non-assertive personality style tended to have poorer emotion recognition scores than more socially oriented females. In contrast, for males, the relationship between traits and recognition scores was much more emotion specific: Emotion traits were not significantly related to a global measure of recognition accuracy but were related to recognition rates of certain emotion expressions — sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. For most of the emotions, males appeared to be more likely to see what they feel. Possible explanations of the findings in terms of perceptual set and other mechanisms are discussed. Implications for clinical studies and research are noted. The study also highlights the importance of separate analysis of data for specific emotions, as well as for sex.     

Maternal Sensitivity and Infant Emotional Reactivity

SUMMARY

Although the construct of infant reactivity is thought to be a temperamental dimension, investigators have been interested in the relation between emotional reactivity and maternal behaviors. In this study, infants' emotional reactivity to frustrating stimuli and maternal sensitivity and intrusiveness were observed at 5 and 10 months of age. Cluster analysis of infants' emotional expressions revealed three patterns of expressive behavior emerged at both ages: (1) frequent anger and negative (distress) expressions, (2) intense anger expressions, and (3) frequent happy expressions. Results demonstrated that patterns of emotional reactivity at 5 and 10 months differed by maternal interactive style. In addition, patterns of emotional reactivity at 10 months of age could be predicted by differences in maternal caregiving, and conversely, 5-month infant reactivity was predictive of 10-month maternal behavior. Conclusions are made regarding ways that mothers socialize emotions and the bi-directional nature of mother-infant interactions.     

To err is social: Network prominence and its effects on self-estimation

In studying professional productivity, researchers find that actors do not always accurately perceive their productivity levels. Yet the literature does not provide an adequate explanation as to why these errors occur. This study examines the effects of network prominence on the self-estimation of productivity. I contend that network prominence is indicated through a variety of dimensions—visibility, connectedness, and professional affiliation—each of which has varying influence on the self-estimation process. This influence is best understood by exploring actors' internal vs. external attributions of prominence. Specifically, when actors attribute their prominence to internal efforts, they will tend to overestimate their productivity. Conversely, when actors attribute their network prominence to external circumstances, they will underestimate their productivity. The distinction between internal and external attributions of prominence relies, in large part, on the process of social comparison.     

Examining Publics' Crisis Responses According to Different Shades of Anger and Sympathy

Integrating the discrete emotions and emotional dimensionality theories in crisis communication research, a 2 (emotional type: anger vs. sympathy) × 2 (emotional intensity: high vs. low) between-subjects experiment using a random general public sample was designed to examine the variance in publics' crisis coping strategies and their acceptance of different organizational crisis responses, as a function of crisis-induced anger and sympathy of different intensity. Differential influences of emotional type and intensity on coping and crisis response preferences were found. Interaction effects revealed: (a) more intense sympathetic feelings lead to higher likelihood of conative coping preference; (b) more sympathy at low intensity contributes to more preference of active cognitive coping and acceptance of accommodative organizational responses; and (c) more intense anger is related to acceptance of more defensive crisis response such as scapegoating.