NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION
✏ SPA2 LECTURE 6

Facial expressions of emotion

  • Two reasons highlight the importance of the face
  • (1) Sending capacity of a body part can be measured through 3 indices (Ekman & Friesen, 1969)
    • Average transmission time (speed)
    • Number of expressions available
    • Visibility
      • Facial muscle changes are rapid → allow for a wide variety of expressions; usually clearly visible.
  • (2) Hypothesis that the facial expressions of emotion are innate (Charles Darwin, 1872)
    • Therefore highly reliable.

Basic emotional expressions

Charles Darwin (1872) identified 6 basic emotions:

  • Disgust
  • Anger
  • Surprise
  • Fear
  • Sadness
  • Happiness
    • Expressions evolved as part of the actions necessary for life.
    • Can be studied in terms of evolutionary theory.
    • Some expressions evolved in terms of functionality and others in terms of communication.

Functions of Facial Expressions

  • Darwin provided an explanation for disgust, anger, surprise and fear.
  • Less successful for happiness and sadness.
  • But smiling and crying may also be seen as innate behaviours - prime function is communication:
    • Crying signals distress to gain attention of caregiver
    • Smiling to maintain that attention

Other cues

Posture

  • Posture can convey different observer emotions and attitudes (Bull, 1987)
  • Participants rated videos intended to evoke interest/boredom and agreement/disagreement.
  • Ratings used to interpret postures displayed while viewing the videos.

Posture and Dating

Vacharkulksemsuk et al., (2016)

  • 2 studies of expansive (vs. contractive) body postures in romantic attraction:
    • (1) Observational - coded postured at a speed dating event (4 mins. only)
    • (2) Experimental - 6 confederates (3M, 3F) on a dating app, each with expansive and contractive postures.

Results...

  • Expansive postures significantly increased the likelihood of…
    • A ‘yes’ response from the speed-dating partner.
    • Being selected on the dating app.
  • Nonverbal affiliation (e.g. smiles, laughs, head nods) were not a significant predictor of speed-dating ‘yes’
  • Significant effects for both males and females, greater male benefit on the dating app.

Innate Hypothesis of Facial Expressions

Evidence

Cross cultural studies

  • The 6 emotions labelled in the same way by members of both:
    • Literate cultures
    • Non-literate cultures (New Guinea) (Ekman & Friesen, 1971)
  • Contempt identified as 7th universal emotion (Ekman & Friesen, 1986)

Studies of disability

  • Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1973)
    • Children born deaf and blind
    • Facial expressions of emotion appropriate to situational context
    • Inheritance?
    • Maybe learned, e.g., through behaviour shaping

Studies of facial musculature

  • Facial Action Coding System (Ekman & Friesen, 1978)
  • Suggested that all possible muscle movements in the face are related to what he calls ‘action units’ (AU)
  • Can be used to categorise any expression by this action unit coding.
  • All but one of the muscle actions visible in the adult identified in newborn infants (Oster & Ekman, 1977)
    • Capacity for facial expressions inborn
    • But not necessarily innately associated with particular emotions.

The Neuro-Cultural Model (NCM)

  • Mitigate between innate / cultural models.
  • 6 fundamental emotions with innate expressions (7 including contempt) (Ekman, 1972)
  • Display rules vary according to culture:
    • Attenuation - dull down an expression
    • Amplification - exaggerate an expression
    • Concealment - mask an expression with a neutral one
    • Substitution - use a different expression to the one you are experiencing
  • Display rules may also vary according to gender, status and even to individuals.

Two types of facial expressions

  • Innate/spontaneous and learned/posed (more strongly related to culture).
  • Supported by case studies of brain damage (Rinn, 1991)
  • Paralysis of:
    • Voluntary facial movement
    • Spontaneous facial expression

Micro-expressions and Subtle expressions

Micro-expressions

  • Very brief expressions – may vary between 1/25th & <0.5 of a second

Subtle Expressions

  • Fragments of an expression:
    • Nose wrinkling (disgust)
    • Brow raising (surprise)
  • Try to conceal an expression

Deception Detection

  • Deception detection correlates with skill at perceiving:
  • Subtle expressions (Warren, Schertler & Bull, 2009)
  • Micro-expressions (e.g. Frank & Ekman, 1997)
  • As used in the American crime drama TV series ‘Lie to Me’

Test of Deception Detection

Warren et al. (2009)

  • Encoders describe interests and hobbies
  • Then lie or honestly describe both a pleasant (scenic countryside) and unpleasant (gory surgery) film
  • Video clips judged by decoders.
  • Objective criterion of accuracy

Results:

  • Overall accuracy rate just 50% (chance result)
    • People are better at lying than they are at detecting lies.
  • Emotional lie detection significantly better than chance (64%)
    • When watching stress clips (e.g. surgery) and pretending that they were watching something more pleasant.
    • Leakage - meant that decoders could detect the lies more readily.
  • Non-emotional lie detection significantly worse than chance (34%)
    • When encoders were watching the video of the pleasant scene and pretending that they were watching something more gruesome.
  • Emotional lie detection significantly correlated with:
    • Subtle Expression Training Tool (SETT) (.46)
    • Self-reported use of facial expressions (.52)

Summary and Conclusions

At least 6 different emotions can be identified from facial expressions

Research suggests that different listener attitudes can be distinguished from posture

Some evidence from brain trauma studies in support of two systems for facial expression (innate/learned)

People skilled at reading micro-expressions & subtle expressions also skilled at detecting deception