Facial Expressions Flashcards
what are the different facets of facial expression research
Production (do faces show distincitve expressions during emotional experiences)
Audiences (how does the presence of other people affect facial expression)
Perception (do people make consistent emotion judgements of facial expressions)
how did Landis (1924) study spontaneous expression
wanted to investigate whether you could infer emotion from facial expressions
photographed participants’ faces while they performed 17 different activities designed to give rise to different emotions, including smelling ammonia, listening to jazz and viewing pornographic images
found no consistent relationship between measured facial expression, and situation or emotion
limitation: the situations used do not produce consistent emotional reactions for all kinds of people
faces don’t express emotion in the way we expect (which has been supported by other more naturalistic studies)
what did Duran et al.’s 2017 meta-analysis of correlations between emotion and facial activity show?
reviewed every study that has measured facial expression in situations that were designed to be associated with specific emotional reactions
r=.24-3
small positive correlation suggests emotion doesn’t explain much of the variance in facial activity
what is Ekman’s (1972) Neurocultural Theory
explains why the relationship between emotion and facial expression is so weak
argues that there are innate neural factors that explain the relationship between emotiosn and facial expressions as each emotion is asociated with a universal facial affect programme
cultural socialisation inhibits the expression of the predicited emotion in certain situations in line with ‘display rules’
antecedents –> universal facial affect program –> (regulation) –> facial expression
argues for 6 basic emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust and surprise
that humans everywhere expereince and would express in the same way were it not for display rules
What is Findlund’s 1994 motive-communication approach to facial displays
the facial positions Ekman focuses on are communications of social motives rather than expressions of emotion
behaviour and social motives will drive the evolution of facial expressions over and above emotions
thus displays are specifically oriented to the individuals to whom we want to communicate our emotions
no one-to-one correspondence between emotions and facial expressions
according to the findings of (Kraut & Johnston, 1979) does smiling depend on happiness?
Recorded when bowlers smiled.
Conditions: outcome (good/bad score) and orientation (pins/friends)
Found that it was not about the outcome but the social context.
BUT bowling may not be a strong enough example of happiness, in this case the smiles observed may be polite rather than an expression of genuine happiness.
what is a douchender smile
Ekman argues that we can distinguish between two types of smile, a natural expression of happiness reflecting authentic joy (a douchender smile) and a polite smile
zygomatic major muscle in the cheek pulling up the corner of the lips is the only movement associated with a polite smile
need to make this distinction when coding facial movements in studies
what did Fernandez-Dols & Ruiz-Belda, 1995 demonstrate about smiling at olympic award ceremonies
A more intense experience of joy: the extent to which athletes smile after winning gold
Three different stages of the 1992 awards ceremony.
Stage 1: waiting behind podium while organisers take their positions (emotional expression view)
Stage 2: standing on the podium and directly interacting with authorities and public (social communication view) - only stage with active interpersonal interaction
Stage 3: listening to national anthem while turned towards the flag
Found that there were significantly more douchender smiles in stage 2 compared to stage 1 and stage 3 (where there were none and few polite smiles)
what does Fridlund (1991) argue about the sociality of solidarity smiling
we smile when we are on our own (although less than when we are in social contexts)
F argues that this solidarity smiling is based on an implicit audience
connected electrodes to participants’ cheeks
4 conditions: solitary, implicit irrelevant task implicit co-viewing and explicit co-viewing,
solitary - particiapnts watch video alone
implicit irrelevant task - arrive with friend but perform different tasks
implicit co-viewing - participants arrive with friend who watched the same video in another room
explicit co-viewing - arrive with friend watched same video in same room
electromyographic activity in both cheeks during the vidwo suggests that the more strongly one imagines an audience for smiling, the more they smile
BUT we already know that people smile more in social contexts, does this not just reflect increasingly social contexts
moreover, experiment implies being watched so audience always present - may have been overly self-conscious in alone condition
what are judgement studies and some of the problems with them
participants are assigned posed or highly selected photographs of facial expressions to 1/6 basic emotion categories
accuracy is assessed in terms of % participants who assign each pictures correctly to the emotion category its intended to represent
random guessing would yield accuracy of 16.67%
it is western indivudals who have agreed that the pictures represent a given emotion
not naturalistic expressions
how do expression judgements vary across cultures?
the 6 basic emotions are recognised at levels above chance within and between a range of non-isolated cultures
consistency may reflect social learning from westsern media rather than innate link between expression and emotion
Ekman et al. (1969) asked members of isolated tribes in Borneo and New Guinea (who had little previous contact with Westerners) to classify facial stimuli
Accuracy was significantly above chance for most facial expressions
so there is evidence for some form of universality but not clear what this is
how does recognition accuracy for members of isolated cultures differ (Russel, 1994)
smiling is attatched to happiness across all cultures - seemingly
it is also the only unambiguously pleasant word in the list so only possible answer
scores are signigicantly above change in at least most cases but are not impressively high - if universal why not higher
potential influence of demand characteristics due to the translation needed
what did Crivelli et al.’s 2016 studies of facial judgements in small-scale societies find
Asked islanders in the Pacific Ocean to point to the face from an array of 6 that represented a portrayed emotion best.
Scores were highest for smiling and happiness.
The scowling ‘angry’ face produced a diverse range of results where 7% point at angry face, 30% point at face of fear and 20% point at smiling face
These findings suggest clear cross cultural differences
What is Russel’s 1994 stance on whether recognition of distinct emotion expressions is universal
knowledge of specific emotion-expression relationships is not necessary to score above chance
clues about arousal from tension in muscles and eye gaze
able to piece together evidence through a process of elimination
exceeding chance does not mean there is a universal link between the specific emotional meaning attached to each face (likely to be much more general)
remote cultures show significantly lower accuracy than closer ones, demonstrating that culture does have an effect on emotion attribution to expression and that results may be contaminated by exposure to westeners
there are cultural influences on expression of emotions which are not fully acknowledged by Ekman’s account
how do we judge faces in context (Aviezer et al., 2008)
Attached the same faces to different kinds of bodies
Demonstrates that a facial expression of disgust can be interpreted in different ways by altering the context.
Facial expressions may not be as important as we initially believe, and are instead one in a number of cues to emotion or social intention.
