Communicating emotion through facial expressions: Social consequences and neural correlates

Abstract

Individuals modulate their facial emotion expressions in the presence of other people. Does this social tuning reflect changes in emotional experiences or attempts to communicate emotions to others? Here, “target” participants underwent facial electromyography (EMG) recording while viewing emotion-inducing images, believing they were either visible or not visible to “observer” participants. In Study 1, when targets believed they were visible, they produced greater EMG activity and were more accurately perceived by observers, but did not report accompanying changes in their emotion experience. In Study 2, simultaneous facial EMG recording and fMRI scanning revealed that social tuning of targets’ facial expressions correlated with activity in brain structures associated with mentalizing. These findings speak to long-standing, competing accounts of emotion expression, and suggest that individuals actively tune their facial expressions in social settings to communicate their experiences to others.

Face masks influence emotion judgments of facial expressions: A drift-diffusion model

“…Communicative theories propose that individuals produce facial expressions to influence others' inferences and behavior (8) (9). For instance, "target" individuals generate larger and clearer facial expressions when conveying their experiences to other people (7). Here, we show that "observer" individuals likewise accumulate evidence for emotion more rapidly from increasingly visible expressions, and that they are more likely-and faster-to perceive these expressions correctly.…”

“…Facial expressions are one of several key channels for conveying emotions to other people (6). Individuals fine-tune their facial emotion displays during social interaction by producing larger and clearer expressions (7), consistent with theoretical perspectives that individuals use facial expressions to communicate with other people and influence them (8) (9). Clear facial emotion communication tracks important outcomes across real-world contexts, from patients experiencing better outcomes after interacting with their doctors (10), to customers perceiving employees as more warm and reporting greater intention to buy from them (11).…”

Emotion experience and expression goals shape emotion regulation strategy choice.

“…In addition, our experiments were conducted in contexts that involved no social interaction between participants. This could mean that our results downplay the importance of goals for emotion expression, as expression is particularly important in the presence of other people (e.g., Sels et al, 2021; Williams et al, 2021). This was addressed somewhat in Experiments 2a and 2b, which incorporated an implicit social element by recording participants’ facial expressions, although this is by no means a prototypical form of social interaction.…”

A Multimodal Emotion Perspective on Social Media Influencer Marketing: The Effectiveness of Influencer Emotions, Network Size, and Branding on Consumer Brand Engagement Using Facial Expression and Linguistic Analysis

“…Facial expressions tend to be more expressive in the presence of others (Fridlund 1991b; Hess, Banse, and Kappas 1995) and are conscientiously adjusted in social situations (Fernández-Dols and Ruiz-Belda 1995). Particularly applicable to the context of influencers, whose followers are not physically present but are anticipated to view the influencers’ posts, research identifies that communicators express stronger (i.e., larger and clearer) emotional expressiveness when they believe people are watching a recording they are making (Williams et al 2021).…”