Lecture 2 - Communication Of Emotions

Question 1

Emotions are communicated how?

Answer 1

55% body language
38% speed tone and inflection
7% what we actually say

Question 2

There are two main claims in psychology for the communication of emotions

Answer 2

Encoding hypothesis = when we feel a state it is encoded in a unique universal pattern

Decoding hypothesis = across cultures we have evolved to be able to quickly judge other people’s emotions

Co-evolution = out signalling capacity co evolved with the capacity of others to decode these signals

Question 3

Non verbal behaviours

Answer 3

In order to help clarify the study of emotional communication Eckman and Freisen (1977) organised the non verbals into 5 categories;

Emblems, illustrators, regulators, self adaptors or manipulators and affective displays

Question 4

Emblems

Answer 4

Gestures used to communicate e.g putting 2 fingers up to say fuck off. Emblems are very culturally specific. For example, putting 2 fingers up in the exact same way in Venezuela simply indicates the number two.

Question 5

Illustrators

Answer 5

Gestures used to give visual imagery e.g. Pointing in a direction when saying “over there” or holding arms out wide when saying “this much”.

Question 6

Regulators

Answer 6

Gestures used to indicate who speaks and who listens. E.g looking in someone’s eyes to indicate you are listening.

Question 7

Self adaptors or manipulators

Answer 7

Random behaviours that we emit eg move leg, play with hair. These are simply nervous outcomes with no communicative value. Adaptors may be gestures that at one point were used for personal convenience but have turned into habit. They are linked with negative emotions such as anxiety.

Question 8

Affect displays

Answer 8

Facial expressions such as smiling

Question 9

Facial expressions of emotion - Eckman’s (1965) study

Answer 9

Argued that facial expressions of emotion are universal and these universal expressions are; anger fear disgust joy sadness and surprise.
Eckman developed the Facial Action Coding system to taxonomize every conceivable human facial expression of emotion.
He found 43 facial motions that each represent a possible emotion.
There are thousands of possible facial expressions but what sets them apart from facial expressions of emotion is; 1) symmetry 2) short in duration 1-5 seconds and 3) involve movement of reliable muscles.
These muscles are hard to use involuntarily thus are hard to fakely express

Question 10

Eckman 1965 procedure and findings

Answer 10

Eckman got skilled actors that were able to move reliable muscles and took around 3000 pics
He took these pics to Chile Brazil Japan and Argentina and told them to match the pictures to the words of the 6 emotions.

Participants matched the words to pics with 80-90% accuracy - thus Eckman concluded these 6 emotions are indeed universal

Question 11

Flaws of Eckman’s study 1965

Answer 11

1) forced choice - could of guessed 4/6 and had a 50% chance of getting last ones right
2) gradient critique - all the expressions should be recognised the same across cultures and they are not some are well recognised like happiness and others are not like surprise and fear
3) ecological validity - pictures were over the top and extreme done by actors - people are better at recognising dynamic displays

Question 12

To over come the flaws in Eckman’s study he…

Answer 12

Eckman visited the Fore tribe (no previous contact with the modern world). He got a translator to tell the tribe emotion specific stories. Happy stories elicited smiles and sad stories elicited frowns. Eckman took pics of their emotional reactions and showed his college students. 60-70% accuracy apart from fear and surprise. Suggests that emotions may be universal.

Question 13

Are women better at recognising facial expressions of emotions?

Answer 13

Bos et al (2016) found that on average women outperform men. It is suggested this is due to testosterone. A single administration has been demonstrated to reduce emotional recognition in females.

Question 14

Cultural variation of facial expressions of emotion - ritualised displays

Answer 14

Some cultures may exaggerate and dramatise facial expressions of emotion. E.g
17th century samurai wives - smile on death
Briggs (1970) - eskimos do not display anger
Hareli et al (2015) - Greek are better at using facial expression of sadness as a sign of norm violation

Question 15

Cultural variation of facial expressions of emotion - regulation of expressive behaviour

Answer 15

Matsumoto et al (1977) - American and Japanese students watched disgusting in private low light or high light with authority figure. In private both students showed universality of facial expressions however in public US students showed more intense expressions with Japanese students changing from disgust to a more polite one.

Matsumoto et al (2009) -
Also studied thousands of photographs taken at the 2004 Athens olympics. Athletes initial emotional expressions to winning or losing were universal however their subsequent expressions were culturally regulated. Cultural influences tended to kick in 1-2 seconds after. The initial facial reaction is triggered automatically by subcortical brain structures before more culturally specific modifications are applied by the motor cortex

Question 16

Cultural variation of facial expressions of emotion - interpreting emotions

Answer 16

Members of different cultures vary in their interpretation of facial expressions of emotion.
A) individualistic cultures - more accurate judges
B) Americans rate negative emotions more appropriate to in group members whereas Japanese rate them more appropriate to out group
C) cultures differ in emotional intensity they attribute to FEofE (Matsumoto & Eckman 1998) - jack et al 2009 supports this

Question 17

Jack et al (2009)

Answer 17

The researchers asked western Caucasian and eastern Asians to categorise white and Chinese faces into the six core emotional expressions.
EA made significantly more errors when categorising FE of fear and surprise in WC. This is because the intensity of emotions are expressed differently in EA thus when trying to identify emotions they focus on the eyes when they also need to consider the mouth

Question 18

two trains of thought when it comes to smiles

Answer 18

1) smiling is an individual act and we smile because we are happy
2) smiling is a social act

Question 19

Kraut and Johnston (1981)

Answer 19

observed bowlers and only 4% of them smiled when they hit a strike whereas 42% smiled when they turned around to a crowd of people

Question 20

Senft et al (2016)

Answer 20

In this study students rated neutral faces. Some of the usual gender and race stereotypes came into play. Caucasian males were rated lower on the trait of agreeableness than caucasian women. Japanese women were rated less extravert than their caucasian counterparts. However these stereotypes disappeared or significantly reduced when the faces were smiling. This shows that smiling reduces the information based on race or gender which may imply that smiling is an important social act.

Question 21

Tidd and Lockard (1978)

Answer 21

customers tip waitresses more in restaurants when they give large smiles which supports the notion that smiling is an important social act.

Question 22

it is important to note however that smiling and other non-verbal emotion suggestive behaviours do not necessarily reflex actual emotional states

Answer 22

Krauss, Chen and Chawla (1996)

Question 23

Van Bezooijen, Otto & Heenen (1983)

Answer 23

got dutch actors to say ‘two months pregnant’ in their native language in a neutral expression and in nine emotion suggestive expressions. Audio recordings were played to dutch, taiwanese and japanese subjects - all of which were able to identify dutch vocal expressions of emotions at above chance expectancy. This suggests that vocals are an important way that one can express emotions even when the words they are speaking are not understood.

Question 24

Juslin and Luakka (2003)

Answer 24

In a review of 60 studies the researcher concluded that hearers can judge 5 emotions with 70% accuracy (anger, fear, happiness, sadness and tenderness).
Judgments are best by listeners of the same culture.
Some emotions e.g. disgust are not well communicated by voice.
Thus, vocals are a way in which we can express emotion however words/language are needed to make the context clearer for the listener

Question 25

Codero et al (2016)

Answer 25

With data from 10 different globalised cultures and 1 remote isolated village in Bhutan, the researchers examined universal and cultural variations in the recognition of 16 non-verbal vocalisations e.g. screams, laughs etc.
College students in 10 nations and villagers in Bhutan were asked to match emotional vocalisations to 1 sentence stories of the same valance.
13 emotions were recognised above chance across the 11 cultures.
This study therefore demonstrates that there are moderate to strong degrees of universality in recognising 13 vocal bursts, in addition to significant cultural variations of emotional recognition.

Question 26

Szameitat et al (2010)

Answer 26

fMRI revealed double dissociation of cerebral responses in the perception of ticking laughter and emotional laughter (joy). Results showed higher activation in anterior rostral medial frontal cortex in the perception of emotional laughter.
Higher activation in the right superior temporal gyrus in the perception of tickling laughter.
These results support the postulated diversification of laughter in the course evolution; from an unequivocal play response to a diverse emotional response subserving complex social functions.

Question 27

Byrant et al (2016)

Answer 27

you laugh differently with friends than strangers and even listeners can tell the difference cross culturally, suggesting that laughter is a language that we all understand

Question 28

we touch for 4 main reasons;

Answer 28

1) to reinforce reciprocity - (stephen and zweigenhaft 1986) found that waitresses were tipped more when they touched the customer on the hand or shoulder.
2) to sooth - (Fairhurst et al 2014) found that children find touch to be soothing.
3) for safety - research suggests that children that have a lot of bodily contact with their parents are more secure and feel safer in unknown environments.
4) for pleasure - rubbing velvet on the arm activates the OFC (the same as other rewards such as food)

Question 29

Beier and Sternberg (1977)

Answer 29

found that happily married couples touches each other more than unhappily married couples. this suggests that emotions (in this case happiness) can be communicated via touch.

Question 30

Hertenstein, Keltner and Apps (2005)

Answer 30

separated an encoder (toucher) and decoder (touch) by a black opaque curtain and encoder had to communicate 5 emotions via touch. Decoders guessed accurately at 50-60%.
Spanish better than decoding emotions than americans.
Women tried to communicate anger to men and they didn’t get it.
Men tried to communicate sympathy to women and they couldn’t do it.

Question 31

A freudian view would suggest that art allows us to express our emotions without attacking each other. Expressing emotion through art allows us to;

Answer 31

clarify emotions: 5-25% of our emotions are unclear and therefore require the use of art

relieves powerful feelings: conflict and stress are catalysts for art therefore art can be cathartic

artistic expression takes the form of our emotional expressions: music analysis shows that the acoustic matches our emotion related vocalisations

Question 32

Fritz et al (2009) - do cultures recognise the same emotions in music?

Answer 32

Researchers sampled computer generated piano music to members of the culturally isolated Mafa tribe of Cameron as well as Western participants.
The music had been specifically designed to convey either happiness, sadness or fear by careful manipulation of mode, tempo, pitch range, tone destiny and rhythmic regularity (according to western conventions) with an accuracy significantly above chance.
Both them and Western participants relied on the same cues to make their judgement; for example pieces with higher tempo were more likely to be rated as happy whereas lower tempo prompted ratings of fear.
This shows that emotions in music are universally recognised.