“Show Me What You Got”: The Nomological Network of the Ability to Pose Facial Emotion Expressions

Abstract

Just as receptive emotional abilities, productive emotional abilities are essential for social communication. Although individual differences in receptive emotional abilities, such as perceiving and recognizing emotions, are well-investigated, individual differences in productive emotional abilities, such as the ability to express emotions in the face, are largely neglected. Consequently, little is known about how emotion expression abilities fit in a nomological network of related abilities and typical behavior. We developed a multitask battery for measuring the ability to pose emotional expressions scored with facial expression recognition software. With three multivariate studies (n1 = 237; n2 = 141; n3 = 123), we test competing measurement models of emotion posing and relate this construct with other socio-emotional traits and cognitive abilities. We replicate the measurement model that includes a general factor of emotion posing, a nested task-specific factor, and emotion-specific factors. The emotion-posing ability factor is moderately to strongly related to receptive socio-emotional abilities, weakly related to general cognitive abilities, and weakly related to extraversion. This is strong evidence that emotion posing is a cognitive interpersonal ability. This new understanding of abilities in emotion communication opens a gateway for studying individual differences in social interaction.