Contributions of facial expressions and body language to the rapid perception of dynamic emotions

Abstract

Correctly perceiving emotions in others is a crucial part of social interactions. We constructed a set of dynamic stimuli to determine the relative contributions of the face and body to the accurate perception of basic emotions. We also manipulated the length of these dynamic stimuli in order to explore how much information is needed to identify emotions. The findings suggest that even a short exposure time of 250 milliseconds provided enough information to correctly identify an emotion above the chance level. Furthermore, we found that recognition patterns from the face alone and the body alone differed as a function of emotion. These findings highlight the role of the body in emotion perception and suggest an advantage for angry bodies, which, in contrast to all other emotions, were comparable to the recognition rates from the face and may be advantageous for perceiving imminent threat from a distance.

Formalizing emotion concepts within a Bayesian model of theory of mind

“…Even the valence of the event (goal-congruent or not) is not reliably perceived in high-intensity faces: the exact same facial configuration can be attributed to extreme joy (the unexpected return of a child from military service), extreme distress (witnessing a terrorist attack), extreme pleasure (orgasm), or extreme pain (unanesthetized nipple piercing) with equal plausibility [33]. To disambiguate these emotions, observers rely on body posture (open arms, lifted chest [44]) or inferred appraisals of the event (“he won the race” [45]).…”

Looking beyond the static face in emotion recognition: The informative case of interest

“…Researchers have used different approaches to investigate this issue, by focusing, for example, on how the synchronization between multiple signals has a facilitation effect in the interaction between mothers and children (Gogate, Bahrick, & Watson, 2000) and on the relative contribution of each modality when they provide conflicting (Massaro & Egan, 1996) or congruent emotional information (Bänziger, Grandjean, & Scherer, 2009;Martinez, Falvello, Aviezer, & Todorov, 2015;Wallbott & Scherer, 1986). While it seems clear and reasonable that multimodal expressions would be better recognized than unimodal expressions, the specific role of each modality remains to be determined (Martinez et al, 2015;Paulmann & Pell, 2011). …”

Eye Gaze and Head Posture Jointly Influence Judgments of Dominance, Physical Strength, and Anger

“…Additionally, the basic emotions cannot be fully perceived using only facial information; body cues add information, which disambiguates facial displays (Martinez, Falvello, Aviezer, & Todorov, 2016). Interestingly, Martinez and collaborators (2016) showed that anger, contrary to other basic emotions, might be perceived slightly better from the body alone than 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 from the face.…”