On the clarity of expressive and contextual information in the recognition of emotions: A methodological critique

Abstract

Ekman, Friesen and Ellsworth's (19826) influential review on emotional expression and context prescribed the current standard criteria for selecting clear and comparable faces and contexts. These recommendations might not pay enough attention to the peculiarities of contextual information. Criteria of clarity for contextual stimuli should be grounded in the process of categorization of social situations (e.g. prototypicality and salience). A set of criteria of contextual clarity were designed according to this line of argument. The resulting contextual stimuli were employed in a replication of Wullbott 's (1988) experiment on recognition of emotions through discrepant sources of information. In contrast with previous studies, subjects'judgments were equally predictable from expression and context.

Emotion Perception: Putting the Face in Context

“…This general finding was replicated using bodily and situational information conveyed by a visual scene (Munn, 1940), film clips (Goldberg, 1951), and video of the actual eliciting circumstances (Sherman, 1927). More recently, this finding has received further support (Fernandez-Dols, Sierra, & Ruiz-Belda, 1993; Fernandez-Dols, Wallbot & Sanchez, 1991, Study 2;Spignesi & Shor, 1981; Wallbott, 1988a, Study 2;Wallbott, 1988b). For example, portrayals of anger are more likely to be perceived as fearful when paired with the description of a dangerous situation (Carroll & Russell, 1996, Study 1).…”

The many faces of a face: Comparing stills and videos of facial expressions in eight dimensions (SAVE database)

“…Clarity Clarity refers to the amount and quality of the emotional information available to the perceiver (Ekman, Friesen, & Ellsworth, 1982;Fernandez-Dols, Sierra, & Ruiz-Belda, 1993). Thus, clarity is fundamental to the perception of facial expressions as well as to achieve mutual adjustment between people (e.g., Bach, Buxtorf, Grandjean, & Strik, 2009).…”

Judging Faces in Context

“…Here, we introduce a new methodological criterion that should be considered: the analysis of data using confusion matrices and the aggregation of data across meaningful emotion combinations. Many studies (Aviezer et al., 2008; Carroll & Russell, 1996; Fernandez‐Dols et al., 1993; Knudsen & Muzekari, 1983; Russell & Fehr, 1987) ask observers to judge emotions by selecting an emotion term from a list (e.g., anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise). Yet, no study to date reports a full confusion matrix of the data with the percentage of observers selecting each of the response alternatives vis‐à‐vis each face‐context combination.…”

“…Others have advocated an additive effect , suggesting that judgments of emotion are more accurate and reliable when information about context is incorporated (Aviezer et al., 2008; Bruner & Tagiuri, 1954; Knudsen & Muzekari, 1983; Meeren, van Heijnsbergen, & de Gelder, 2005). Some have argued for none of these (Fernandez‐Dols, Sierra, & Ruiz‐Belda, 1993; Goodenough & Tinker, 1931; Munn, 1940; Vinacke, 1949).…”

“…The first issue to consider, therefore, concerns the specific aspect of context linked with the face, because different types of linkages refer to different real‐life phenomena. Combining faces with information about what triggered an emotion (e.g., via verbal descriptions, a commonly used methodology in the past; see Ekman, Friesen, & Ellsworth, 1972; Fernandez‐Dols et al., 1993; Frijda, 1969; Goodenough & Tinker, 1931; Knudsen & Muzekari, 1983) is what we term Face‐Trigger Linkage , because in these cases, the facial expressions are considered to be the expresser’s reactions to the eliciting trigger. Thus, seeing sad faces in relation to a situation that elicits sadness will give the impression that the expresser’s reaction was indeed sad; seeing angry faces in that same situation would suggest that the expresser reacted with anger.…”