Self-other perception of the intensity of facial expressions of emotion: do we know what we show?

Participants' self-reports of the intensity of their facial expressive responses to an amusing stimulus were compared with judges' ratings in 2 studies. In Experiment 1, 24 men and 24 women who were alone and assigned to either a spontaneous or facial attention condition perceived their facial behavior to be significantly more expressive than judges' ratings indicated it had been. In Experiment 2, 36 men and 36 women who presumed themselves to be under observation were assigned to an uninstructed, pose, or communicate condition. Self-reports of expressive responses to an amusing stimulus again significantly exceeded judges' ratings in the first 2 conditions but not when participants were told to communicate their feelings.

Effects of talking about a stressful event on arousal: does what we talk about make a difference?

In Study 1, 30 male and 30 female undergraduates viewed an affect-neutral stimulus and a stress-inducing stimulus. Ss then talked about either their emotional reactions to the stressful stimulus (emotion condition), the sequence of events within it (fact condition), or the sequence of events within the neutral stimulus (distraction condition). Emotion-condition Ss were more autonomically aroused during a 2nd exposure to the stressful stimulus than were fact-condition Ss. In Study 2, 48 hr separated Ss' talking about their 1st exposure to the stressful stimulus from their 2nd exposure to it. Emotion-condition Ss had lower levels of autonomic arousal while viewing the stimulus again and reported more positive affect after watching it than did fact-condition Ss. These results are discussed in the context of cognitive appraisal, perceptual-motor, and self-disclosure views of emotion.

The facilitative effect of facial expression on the self-generation of emotion.

Twenty-seven female undergraduates completed three tasks: (1) feel four emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, peacefulness); (2) express these emotions, without trying to feel them; and (3) feel and express clearly these four emotions. During each trial subjects pressed a button to indicate when they had reached the required state, and the latency from emotion cue to button press was measured. Heart rate, skin conductance and EMG from four facial sites (brow, cheek, jaw and mouth) were recorded for 15 s before and after the button press and during a baseline period prior to each trial. Self-reports were obtained after each trial. Facial EMG and patterns of autonomic arousal differentiated among the four emotions within each task. Shorter self-generation latency in the Feel-and-Show versus the Feel condition indicated the facilitative effect of facial expression on the self-generation of emotion. Furthermore, the presence of autonomic changes and self-reported affect in the Show condition supports the sufficiency version of the facial feedback hypothesis. The self-generation method employed as an emotion elicitor was shown to reliably induce emotional reactions and is proposed as a useful technique for the elicitation of various emotional states in the laboratory.

Avoidance of the handicapped: an attributional ambiguity analysis.

We demonstrated a general strategy for detecting motives that people wish to conceal. The strategy consists of having people choose between two alternatives, one of which happens to satisfy the motive. By counterbalancing which one does so, it is possible to distill the motive by examining the pattern of choices that people make. The motive used in the demonstration is the desire we believe most people have to avoid the physically handicapped. Because they do not wish to reveal this desire, we predicted that they would be more likely to act on it if they could appear to choose on some other basis. In two studies we found that people avoided the handicapped more often if the decision to do so was also a decision between two movies and avoidance of the handicapped could masquerade as a movie preference.

Effects of being observed on expressive, subjective, and physiological responses to painful stimuli.

Two experiments explored the effects of observation by another on responses to painful stimuli. It was anticipated that the intensity of pain-related non-verbal expressivity decreases under observation, while indices of arousal (skin conductance and self-report) increase. In Experiment 1, subjects' expressive responses to shock were attenuated when subjects were observed as compared to when they were alone, but the anticipated augmentation of arousal did not occur. Rather, the attenuation of expressive behavior was accompanied by a general decrease in subjective and autonomic responses to the painful stimuli. A second experiment replicated the results of the first study and, in addition, found no evidence for a differential impact of sex of observer on the three measures of arousal. An interpretation is discussed for the effect of observation on expressive behavior and for the relationships observed among expressive, autonomic, and subjective indices of pain.

Effects of nonverbal dissimulation on emotional experience and autonomic arousal.

Three studies are reported that examine the relationship between the nonverbal display of emotional affect and indices of the emotional state. Subjects were asked either to conceal or to exaggerate the facial display associated with the anticipation and reception of painful shocks that varied in intensity. Both self-reports of shock painfulness and skin conductance measures of emotional response showed significant changes paralleling the changes induced in expressive behavior; that is, the suppression of expressive responses decreased the magnitude of phasic skin conductance changes and subjective reports of painfulness as compared to the free expression or exaggeration of pain-related expressive response. The effects were obtained for shocks of varying intensities and for both male and female subjects. The findings support theories of emotion that assume that expressive responses serve a self-regulatory as well as a social-communicative function, and further suggest that the self-regulation is mediated neurally, rather than via a process of self-attribution. Finally, the results highlight the need for research on dissimulation in social interaction to consider the effects of acting upon the actor, as well as its effects upon the inferences of observers.