FUNDAMENTAL OF EXPRESSIONS

FACS

  • The Facial Action Coding System; 1978; Paul Ekman; 7 years to develop
  • Anatomically based coding system
  • 44 action units
  • 1 hour to code 1 minute

Kraut and Johnson (1979). Know methods and findings

  • They studied people at hockey games
  • They found that smiling increases when fans are interacting with each other
  • The results of the study found that it didn’t matter if it was a good or bad outcome;
  • If fans were interacting, they spent about 40% of the time smiling, good or bad
  • If there was a good outcome and the fans were alone, they smiled approximately 20% of the time
  • If there was a bad outcome and the fans were alone, they smiled approximately 5% of the time

What are the five categories of non-verbal behavior we discussed in class? Name 2 examples of each. What did Ellyson & Dovidio (1985) find regarding regulators in relation to high vs low status individuals? What are the 4 characteristics we discussed in relation to affective displays? What’s the difference between a Duchenne smile and a non-Duchenne smile (what’s the name of the muscle)?

  • Emblems: nonverbal messages with a verbal counterpart; peace signs, middle finger
  • Illustrators: speech linked gestures; helps give more attention to the message; winking; talking with hands
  • Regulators: signs that regulate, modulate, and maintain the flow of speech in conversations; eye contact, nodding along
  • Self-adapters: unintentional behaviors in response to boredom or stress; fidgeting with fingers, hair twirling
  • Affective displays: movements that “reflect” affective state; smiling, laughing
  • The higher status a person is, the more control the person has; higher status people tend to talk more
  • Lower status people tend to have more regulators to show they are paying attention and are engaged in the conversation
  • Symmetry: real expressions of emotion are symmetrical; non real emotions are asymmetrical
  • 1-5 seconds of duration: a vast majority of emotional displays last only .5 to 2 seconds
  • Reliable muscle movement: involuntary; hard to fake; each emotion has its own reliable muscle movement; different neural pathway from the brain to the movements
  • 34 sets of facial muscles: you can make over 10000 different facial expressions; referential expression = conveying an emotion when you’re not actually experiencing it
  • A Duchenne smile is a real smile compared to a non-Duchenne smile, which is not a real smile; the zygomaticus major muscle lifts the corners of your mouth while the orbicular oculi raises your cheeks

What two major functions does the face serve? Why is it important to know the context in which people are making emotional displays for inferring given emotions?

  • The informative function: tells us how we are perceiving a situation
  • The evocative function: elicits behavior in others
  • Important point: morphology (the shape of an emotion) does not equal the specific emotion

What was the overarching theory that Darwin was attempting to support in The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals which stated that our species descended from other species? At the time Darwin wrote his book, what did creationists believe about emotion and how did Darwin’s beliefs differ? Provide two emotions as examples that Darwin could point to support his contention that facial displays of emotion were directly adaptive. According to Darwin, why should emotional displays be universal?

  • Initial evidence for universality; asking people across the world about emotional expressions
  • Biogenetic continuity: our species descended from other species
    • Idea: At one point, many facial expressions were directly adapted;
    • Big idea: we all have the same facial anatomy and we all descended from the same species
  • Says there is no biology involved; it is all culture
  • Intuit people in Alaska never expressed anger
  • Japanese wives of the Samurai in the 17th century smiled and were happy when their husbands died in battle

Why did Ekman go to study the non-Westernized Fore in Papua New Guinea? Describe and identify the name of the method he used to study emotional decoding in this group. Which emotions did they most commonly confuse? Which emotion from Elfenbein and Ambady’s (2002) meta-analysis do subjects decode most / least accurately?

  • He went to Papua New Guinea and took pictures of facial expressions/emotions
  • He went there because they had never been exposed to Western media and couldn’t read or write
  • He used the Dashiell Method: had them choose facial expressions
    • Told them a story verbally that was relevant to their culture and were told to pick a facial expression that corresponded to the story
    • Fear and surprise
  • Happiness
  • fear

List and describe the five major critiques we discussed that researchers like James Russell wage against Ekman’s Universality studies of decoding.

  • Gradient critique: should all be the same
  • Forced-choice: does choosing an emotion inflate accuracy?
  • Ecological validity: not expressions you see in real life; very intense
  • Within-subjects: being exposed to all conditions; process of elimination
  • Recognition does not equal production: just because they recognize a facial expression does not mean they can produce it

What two paradigms did Dacher Keltner use to study embarrassment? What other “emotions” have distinct signals other than the emotions Ekman studies?

  • Forced choice and free response
  • Shame, pride, love, sexual desire

Compare and contrast Ekman’s Neurocultural Theory of emotion with Alan Fridlund’s Behavioral Ecology View of Emotion. What are the primary display rules as described by Ekman? Provide an example of each.

  • Direct connection between neural pathways and expression made
  • Rule 1: intensification of emotion displays
  • Rule 2: de-intensify emotion displays
  • Rule 3: neutralize emotion displays
  • Rule 4: masking of displays with other emotions
  • Emotions are designed to signal to others and are inherently social
  • Social motives influences what facial expressions a person shows

We discussed four aspects / phenomena of emotion where you see cultural variability. List and describe each of these.

  • In-group decoding advantage
  • Display rules
  • Ritualized displays
  • appraisal

How is the vocal communication of emotions studied? Which emotion communicated via the voice is the most accurately communicated?

  • Encoding studies:
    • Natural vocal expressions
    • Induce emotions
    • Simulated vocal expressions
  • Decoding studies:
    • Forced choice
    • Free response
  • anger

Describe the methodology and results of Hertenstein et al. (2006 - not to be confused with Hertenstein et al. that we discussed in class).

  • Studies on emotional expressions have focused on voice and face, but not many studies have been conducted on touch. The aim of this study was to find out (1) whether humans can communicate distinct emotions via tactile behaviors and if so can they communicate more than just 6 basic emotions; (2) the tactile signals people use to communicate specific emotions and (3) whether observers of tactile interactions can accurately identify the emotions shown.
  • Method: two participants are separated by a black curtain and they can neither talk nor see each other. The encoder will communicate each emotion via touching the decoder’s arm. The decoder then have to choose out of 12 emotions what the emotion being communicated was.
  • Results: In both samples of participants from the US and Spain, individuals were able to accurately decode anger, fear, disgust, love, sympathy, and gratitude at much-more-than-chance levels. None of the self-focused emotions (pride, shame, envy) was decoded via touch. Observers of these interactions (experiment 3) were also able to identify these emotions accurately.