Interaction between facial expression and color

Abstract

Facial color varies depending on emotional state, and emotions are often described in relation to facial color. In this study, we investigated whether the recognition of facial expressions was affected by facial color and vice versa. In the facial expression task, expression morph continua were employed: fear-anger and sadness-happiness. The morphed faces were presented in three different facial colors (bluish, neutral, and reddish color). Participants identified a facial expression between the two endpoints (e.g., fear or anger) regardless of its facial color. The results showed that the perception of facial expression was influenced by facial color. In the fear-anger morphs, intermediate morphs of reddish-colored and bluish colored faces had a greater tendency to be identified as angry faces and fearful faces, respectively. In the facial color task, two bluish-to-reddish colored face continua were presented in three different facial expressions (fear-neutral-anger and sadness-neutral-happiness). Participants judged whether the facial color was reddish or bluish regardless of its expression. The faces with sad expression tended to be identified as more bluish, while the faces with other expressions did not affect facial color judgment. These results suggest that an interactive but disproportionate relationship exists between facial color and expression in face perception.

Effects of Face and Background Color on Facial Expression Perception

“…Color images of emotional faces (four females and four males posing as fearful and angry) were taken from the ATR Facial Expression Image Database (DB99) (ATR-Promotions, Kyoto, Japan), as used in Nakajima et al (2017) . The database has ten different types of facial expression from four female and six male Asian models.…”

“…We have previously demonstrated that facial color clearly influences the judgment of facial expression using morphed facial expressions as experimental stimuli ( Nakajima et al, 2017 ). However, color itself is also known to convey meaningful information such as attractiveness ( Elliot and Niesta, 2008 ; Guéguen, 2012 ; Pazda et al, 2013 ; Young, 2015 ).…”

Alexithymia Is Related to the Need for More Emotional Intensity to Identify Static Fearful Facial Expressions

“…Correct responses for each emotional facial expression were used to calculate the mean expression identification rate at each intensity level. Then, for each subject, expression identification rates for each emotional facial expression were fit to a psychometric function using a generalized linear model with a binomial distribution in MATLAB software (MathWorks, Natick, MA, United States) ( Nakajima et al, 2017 ). The point of subjective equality (PSE) was then calculated and used for statistical analysis.…”

Commentary: Interaction between facial expression and color

“…In the study, by Nakajima et al ( 2017 ), the authors implemented two experiments where they investigated if face expression perception could be influenced by facial color and vice versa. In both experiments the authors used a set of faces created by morphing two facial expressions: fear to anger and sadness to happiness.…”

“…The study of Nakajima et al ( 2017 ) showed how color can influence the facial expression recognition. This research, together with future studies can lead to a better understanding of how high-level perception is modulated and how variables such as physical features, emotions, and colors interact with each other to produce the final perception.…”