Communication of individual emotions by spontaneous facial expressions.

Abstract

We examine whether spontaneous facial expressions provide observers with sufficient information to distinguish accurately which of seven affective states (six emotional and one neutral) is being experienced by another person. Senders' facial expressions were covertly videotaped as they watched emotionally loaded slides. After each slide, senders nominated the emotion term that best described their affective reaction, and also rated the pleasantness and strength of that reaction. Similar nominations of emotion terms and ratings were later made by receivers who viewed the senders' videotaped facial expressions. The central measure of communication accuracy was the match between senders' and receivers' emotion nominations. Overall accuracy was significantly greater than chance, although it was not impressive in absolute terms. Only happy, angry, and disgusted expressions were recognized at above-chance rates, whereas surprised expressions were recognized at rates that were significantly worse than chance. Overall, female subjects were found to be significantly better senders than were male subjects. Although neither sex was found to be better at receiving facial expressions, female subjects were better receivers of female senders' expressions than of male senders' expressions. Female senders' neutral and surprised expressions were more accurately recognized than were those of male senders. The only sex difference found for the decoding of emotions was a tendency for male subjects to be more accurate at recognizing anger. The results are discussed in relation to those of other studies of emotional communication through facial expression.Since Ekman, Friesen, and Ellsworth's (1972) influential review and reanalysis of experiments on facial expression conducted between 1914 and 1970, there has been a widespread assumption that facial expressions can be used by individuals to infer the emotional experiences of others with a reasonable degree of accuracy. Such an assumption, however, is a generalization that requires closer examination: Under what conditions can facial expressions communicate emotional experiences? We are concerned with the capacity of dynamic and spontaneous facial expressions to communicate the quality of emotional experience. There are surprisingly few studies that bear on this issue; certainly, none of the studies reviewed by Ekman et al. (1972) allows us to draw any conclusion about the communication of specific emotional quality by way of dynamic, spontaneous emotional expressions.Previous studies are limited for this purpose by one or more of six design problems: first, the use of posed rather than spontaneous expressions; second, the use of general affective categories rather than specific emotions; third, assessing accuracy by identification of class of eliciting stimulus rather than of the emotion experienced by the sender; fourth, the use of only two classes of stimuli (or emotional states); fifth, showing receivers more than just facial expressions; and sixth, the use of still rather than dyn...

A review on sex differences in processing emotional signals

“…Other studies suggest that these sex differences depend on the type of emotion. Women are said to be better in recognizing facial expressions of fear and sadness (Mandal & Palchoudhury, 1985;Nowicki & Hartigan, 1988), while men are superior at identifying anger (Mandal & Palchoudhury, 1985;Rotter & Rotter, 1988;Wagner, 1986).…”

Sex differences in emotion: Expression, experience, and physiology.

“…Studies investigating specific emotions have found that women are more expressive of sadness (e.g., Allen & Haccoun, 1976;Balswick & Avertt, 1977;Fujita et al, 1980;Rotter & Rotter, 1988;Schwartz et al, 1980;Zuckerman et al, 1975; but see Tucker & Riggio, 1988), disgust (e.g., Fujita et al, 1980;Rotter & Rotter, 1988;Tucker & Riggio, 1988;Wagner et al, 1993;Wagner etal., 1986;Zuckerman etal., 1975),fear(e.g.,Allen& Haccoun, 1976Rotter & Rotter, 1988;Schwartz et al, 1980;Wagner et al, 1993;Zuckerman et al, 1975), surprise (e.g., Fujita et al, 1980;Wagner et al, 1993;Wagner et al, 1986;Zuckerman et al, 1975), happiness or smiling (e.g., Balswick & Avertt, 1977;Barr & Kleck, 1995;Frances, 1979;Fujita et al, 1980;Halberstadt et al, 1988;Tucker & Riggio, 1988;Zuckerman et al, 1975; but see Wagner et al, 1986), and anger (e.g., Allen & Haccoun, 1976;Schwartz et al, 1980;Wagner et al, 1993;Zuckerman et al, 1975; but see Rotter & Rotter, 1988).…”

“…That is, a number of studies have found women to be more expressive than men using a variety of expression measures, such as EMG (e.g., Greenwald, Cook, & Lang, 1989;Lang, Greenwald, Bradley, & Hamm, 1993;Schwartz, Brown, & Ahem, 1980), ratings of communication accuracy (e.g., Buck, Baron, Goodman, & Shapiro, 1980;Buck, Miller, & Caul, 1974;Buck, Savin, Miller, & Caul, 1972;Fujita, Harper, & Wiens, 1980;Rotter & Rotter, 1988;Wagner, Buck, & Winterbotham, 1993;Wagner, MacDonald, & Manstead, 1986;Zuckerman, Lipets, Hall Koivumaki, & Rosenthal, 1975), self-report of expression (e.g., Allen & Haccoun, 1976;Balswick & Avertt, 1977;Gross & John, 1995;Kring et al, 1994), and ratings of a variety of nonverbal behaviors such as smiling and gesturing (e.g., Barr & Kleck, 1995;Frances, 1979;Halberstadt, Hayes, & Pike, 1988;Notarious & Johnson, 1982;Ragan, 1982;Riggio & Friedman, 1986). Although fairly rare, some studies have failed to find sex differences in expressiveness (e.g., Cupchik & Poulos, 1984;Fridlund, 1990;Lanzetta, Cartwright-Smith, & Kleck, 1976;Vrana, 1993;Wagner, 1990;Zuckerman, Hall, DeFrank, & Rosenthal, 1976).…”

Modeling continuous self-report measures of perceived emotion using generalized additive mixed models.

“…Researchers have used a range of methods to compare dynamic and static images that has included dynamically morphing a sequence of still images (Kamachi et al, 2001), animating synthetic images (Wehrle, Kaiser, Schmidt, & Scherer, 2000), and presenting film of spontaneous responses to emotional slides (Wagner, MacDonald, & Manstead, 1986). All of these studies have employed a recognition paradigm in which observers are asked, after viewing the stimulus, to judge what emotion was being displayed.…”