We investigated the hypothesis that people's facial activity influences their affective responses. Two studies were designed to both eliminate methodological problems of earlier experiments and clarify theoretical ambiguities. This was achieved by having subjects hold a pen in their mouth in ways that either inhibited or facilitated the muscles typically associated with smiling without requiring subjects to pose in a smiling face. Study 1's results demonstrated the effectiveness of the procedure. Subjects reported more intense humor responses when cartoons were presented under facilitating conditions than under inhibiting conditions that precluded labeling of the facial expression in emotion categories. Study 2 served to further validate the methodology and to answer additional theoretical questions. The results replicated Study 1's findings and also showed that facial feedback operates on the affective but not on the cognitive component of the humor response. Finally, the results suggested that both inhibitory and facilitatory mechanisms may have contributed to the observed affective responses.

This article reports 2 experiments that test whether both emotional and nonemotional feelings may be influenced by uninterpreted proprioceptive input. The logic of the procedure was adopted from studies by F. Strack, L. Martin, and S. Stepper (1988), who unobtrusively manipulated people's facial expressions. In the 1st experiment, a functionally equivalent technique was used to vary the posture of the body. Study 1 results revealed that success at an achievement task led to greater feelings of pride if the outcome was received in an upright position rather than in a slumped posture. Study 2 results revealed that nonemotional feelings of effort were influenced by contraction of the forehead muscle (corrugator), and Ss' self-ratings on a trait dimension reflected this experience when the facial contraction was maintained during the recall of behavioral episodes exemplifying this trait. To account for these results, a framework is proposed that draws on a distinction between noetic and experiential representations.

We tested the hypothesis that the activation of the motivational systems of approach or avoidance by body postures and taste influences residual attention during the process of encoding differentially valenced words. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to stand upright or kneel while learning either positive or negative adjectives. To measure participants' differential cognitive capacities, a dual task paradigm was used, including a finger‐dexterity test as a secondary task. We were able to show that participants performed worse on the secondary task compared to a baseline assessed before if there was incompatibility between postures and the valence of the information. In Experiment 2, we replicated the results with bitter and sweet taste instead of body positions. It is our contention that the activation of approach or avoidance systems by bodily states prepares the organism for information of differential valence. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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