Emotions Do Reliably Co-Occur With Predicted Facial Signals: Comment on Durán and Fernández-Dols (2021)

Durán and Fernández-Dols (2021) have done the field a service by conducting a meta-analytic review of the association between emotion experiences and facial expressions. Although they conclude that no meaningful association exists, our reading of their analyses suggest a different interpretation: The data that they report indicate an association of substantial magnitude-as large as 1.5 times the size of the average effect in social psychology and larger than 76% of meta-analytic effects previously reported throughout personality and social psychology (Gignac & Szodorai, 2016; Richard et al., 2003). Moreover, reexamination of some of the exclusion and classification choices made by Durán and Fernández-Dols (e.g., excluding intraindividual designs and studies purported to measure "amusement" from the primary analyses of "happiness") suggests that the observed large effects would be larger still if a more comprehensive set of studies had been included in their review. In sum, we conclude that Durán and Fernández-Dols' meta-analyses provide robust evidence that emotions do reliably co-occur with their predicted facial signals, although this conclusion is opposite to the one stated in their report.