Facial expressions of emotion

The aim of this study is to investigate the facial expressions of emotion. Two fundamental problems are taken up: (a) the elicitation and recording of facial expressions of emotion, and (b) the identification of these facial expressions from the eye region, mouth region, and full face. The subjects, who were photographed in a series of situations designed to elicit actual emotional reactions, consisted of six men and six women. Of the women, two were graduate students in psychology, one was a junior high school teacher, one was an undergraduate student in art, and two were stenographers. Of the men, three were teaching assistants in psychology, one was an undergraduate in engineering, one an undergraduate in business administration, and one was a professional musician. The results shows that the overt responses and introspective reports of the subjects reveal that emotional behavior was elicited in the experimental situation. Different experimental situations elicited differential patterns of response on the part of the most subjects. Marked individual differences in overt responses and introspective reports for each experimental situation were noted. Reactions to the experimental situations did not yield any systematic sex differences either in overt responses or introspective reports. Certain specific facial expressions of emotion were more reliably identified from the eye region, and others were more reliably identified from the mouth region. Acted expressions tended to favor the mouth region. For certain specific facial expressions of emotion the correspondence between judgments based on the eye region and full face was greater than the correspondence between judgments based on the mouth region and full face. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)