Spontaneous Facial Actions Map onto Emotional Experiences in a Non-social Context: Toward a Component-Based Approach

Abstract

While numerous studies have examined the relationships between facial actions and emotions, they have yet to account for the ways that specific spontaneous facial expressions map onto emotional experiences induced without expressive intent. Moreover, previous studies emphasized that a fine-grained investigation of facial components could establish the coherence of facial actions with actual internal states. Therefore, this study aimed to accumulate evidence for the correspondence between spontaneous facial components and emotional experiences. We reinvestigated data from previous research which secretly recorded spontaneous facial expressions of Japanese participants as they watched film clips designed to evoke four different target emotions: surprise, amusement, disgust, and sadness. The participants rated their emotional experiences via a self-reported questionnaire of 16 emotions. These spontaneous facial expressions were coded using the Facial Action Coding System, the gold standard for classifying visible facial movements. We corroborated each facial action that was present in the emotional experiences by applying stepwise regression models. The results found that spontaneous facial components occurred in ways that cohere to their evolutionary functions based on the rating values of emotional experiences (e.g., the inner brow raiser might be involved in the evaluation of novelty). This study provided new empirical evidence for the correspondence between each spontaneous facial component and first-person internal states of emotion as reported by the expresser.

Dynamic Displays Enhance the Ability to Discriminate Genuine and Posed Facial Expressions of Emotion

“…After recording their genuine expressions, participants were debriefed about their candid recordings in line with protocols set by the Ethical Committee of the Graduate School of Education, Hiroshima University, to which data collection was affirmed or denied if the participant consented to the use of their recordings for analysis, and in the event that consent was not given, the recorded data was deleted in front of the participant ( Namba et al, 2017c ). Among these facial displays, the parts of the clips to be used as stimuli were selected based on the following criteria: (1) the spontaneous and posed facial expressions contained the most frequently expressed and representative properties among expressers ( Namba et al, 2017c ), (2) the spontaneous facial expression contained facial components related to target emotional experiences in other empirical studies ( Namba et al, 2017a , b ), and (3) the same expresser was present in both the spontaneous and posed facial expressions in order to avoid inter-target differences. Additionally, dynamic and static presentations were created using these clips.…”

“…Considering the findings of Krumhuber and Manstead (2009) , it was assumed that sensitivity to this discrimination would be increased for dynamic displays as compared to static ones, and that the evidence base for the phenomenon would be extended beyond amusement to surprise, disgust, and sadness. To further control for the effects of expressive intent as much as possible, the current study utilized the spontaneous facial data obtained in a previous study ( Namba et al, 2017a ). Spontaneous and posed facial expressions for the emotions of amusement, disgust, surprise, and sadness were recorded to compare morphological aspects in that study, where video clips of secretly recorded facial behaviors as expressers experienced a strong emotion in a room by themselves were used as genuine displays.…”

Investigation of the dependency of the drivers’ emotional experience on different road types and driving conditions

“…To avoid influences of road type ratio and variance of road on emotional responses of participants a greater variety of roads and a larger participant sample should be considered in future research. Researcher's presence in the car The Hawthorne effect is an alteration of behavior when participants are aware they are under observation (Jackson and Cox, 2013;Oswald, 2014). While previous research has debated the existence and significance of the effect (Franke and Kaul, 1978;Jones 1992), all efforts were made to avoid any potential bias attributable to the presence of the observer in the car during the study.…”

“…Emotional states can significantly influence goal generation, decision making, focus, attention and performance (Eyben et al, 2010). Consequently, seeking to better understand human emotions has become a rapidly expanding research area (Noldus et al, 2017). Numerous studies have been conducted investigating emotional states, (Grimm et al, 2007;Healey, 2000;Healey and Picard, 2005;Hoch et al, 2005;Jones and Jonsson, 2008;Lisetti and Nasoz, 2005), with a particular prevalence of aggression, workload and stress.…”

“…Furthermore, developments like telematics and vehicle autonomy are anticipated to expand automotive revenues by 30% (Gao et al, 2016), with self-driving cars predicted to be a $87 billion opportunity by 2030 (Jacques, 2014). As these features are introduced, the emotional relationship between owner and automobile (Miller, 2001;Noldus et al, 2017), the role and significance of emotions in the wider automotive environment, and customer needs, desires and behaviors, will change (Gao et al, 2016). The automotive design process will need to adapt to the growing sophistication of in-car technologies and these changing requirements (Gao et al, 2016).…”