Facing Fear: Expression of Fear Facilitates Processing of Emotional Information

Abstract

Evidence shows that manipulating the expressive component of fear can influence the processing of emotional information. Participants unobtrusively produced the expressive behaviors typical of fear, anger or happiness. Participants producing the expression of fear were faster at classifying verbal material with emotional content than participants producing the expressions of happiness or anger. These effects were especially pronounced for participants who were generally sensitive to their own bodily cues, as indicated by their degree of field-dependence measured by the Rod-and-Frame Task (Witkin & Asch, 1948). The results suggest that one way of eliciting the cognitive consequences of fear is by inducing the embodied expressive behavior.

Embodied health: a guiding perspective for research in health psychology

“…An embodied approach to non-verbal health behaviour suggests that in addition to the physicians' nonverbal cues, patients might receive implicit cues about their experience via their own sensorimotor experiences. As previously discussed, embodied manipulations have successfully primed anxiety through facial expressions (Duclos et al, 1989) and postures (i.e., sitting 'on the edge of your seat'; Schnall & Laird, 2007). Therefore, we suggest that manipulation of patients' own non-verbal cues (e.g., tense or relaxed bodily postures) can influence patients' experiences during interactions with their healthcare providers.…”

“…For example, researchers have primed anxiety via embodied cues in facial expressions of anxiety (Duclos et al, 1989) and through bodily orientation, such as sitting literally 'on the edge of their seats' (Schnall & Laird, 2007). Similarly, the sense of moral impurity can be assuaged by the physical act of hand-washing after committing an unethical act (Zhong & Liljenquist, 2006), which demonstrates that even complex psychological states (moral purity) can be influenced by embodied primes (physical purity).…”

Distinguishing between attributional and mnemonic sources of familiarity: The case of positive emotion bias

“…The physical expressions of emotion are known to produce feelings consistent with those emotions (e.g., Schnall & Laird, 2003). Furthermore, affective expressions can influence cognitive information processing (Centerbar, Schnall, Clore, & Garvin, 2008;Schnall & Laird, 2007). If positive affective cues lead to a sense of fluency that is easily misattributed to familiarity, the smiling condition should produce higher rates of old judgments but no change in accuracy, relative to the frowning condition.…”

“…Unbeknownst to the subjects, the nature of these contractions was varied between groups and resulted in a happy facial expression and posture for half of the subjects and a sad facial expression and posture for the other half. Using anatomically detailed charts showing the musculature of the face and back (Centerbar et al, 2008;Schnall & Laird, 2007), the experimenter instructed the subjects in the happy expression condition to contract the zygomaticus and risorius muscles by turning up the corners of their mouth while leaving their mouth open a little, and to activate the trapezius and latissimus dorsi muscles by sitting up straight with their knees bent at a right angle. In the sad expression condition, the subjects were instructed to contract the triangularis and platysma muscles by drawing the corners of their mouth down and back and letting their head hang down a little, and to activate the trapezius and latissimus dorsi muscles by drooping their shoulders and letting their body go relatively limp while dropping their rib cage.…”

“…The subjects were seated at individual computers, with up to 4 subjects in a room per session. Following the methods of Schnall and Laird (2007) and Centerbar et al (2008), the subjects were told at the outset that the experiment would investigate the effect of anaerobic exercise on word recognition and memory, and they read a cover story describing legitimate research on the link between anaerobic exercise and cognition. The study phase followed, in which the subjects were instructed to remember the list of words for the coming memory test.…”