Human facial expressions as adaptations: Evolutionary questions in facial expression research

Schmidt, Karen L.; Cohn, Jeffrey F.

doi:10.1002/ajpa.20001.abs

Cited by 79 publications

(73 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Furthermore, they show that these catastrophic changes are communicated with greater sensitivity over a range of distances, consistent with an explicit function for social interaction for happy and surprised faces. Thus, an explicitly recognizable smiling face might communicate positive emotion and signal that the individual is willing to engage in reciprocal altruism [67]. …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identification of Emotional Facial Expressions: Effects of Expression, Intensity, and Sex on Eye Gaze

2016

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The identification of emotional expressions is vital for social interaction, and can be affected by various factors, including the expressed emotion, the intensity of the expression, the sex of the face, and the gender of the observer. This study investigates how these factors affect the speed and accuracy of expression recognition, as well as dwell time on the two most significant areas of the face: the eyes and the mouth. Participants were asked to identify expressions from female and male faces displaying six expressions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise), each with three levels of intensity (low, moderate, and normal). Overall, responses were fastest and most accurate for happy expressions, but slowest and least accurate for fearful expressions. More intense expressions were also classified most accurately. Reaction time showed a different pattern, with slowest response times recorded for expressions of moderate intensity. Overall, responses were slowest, but also most accurate, for female faces. Relative to male observers, women showed greater accuracy and speed when recognizing female expressions. Dwell time analyses revealed that attention to the eyes was about three times greater than on the mouth, with fearful eyes in particular attracting longer dwell times. The mouth region was attended to the most for fearful, angry, and disgusted expressions and least for surprise. These results extend upon previous findings to show important effects of expression, emotion intensity, and sex on expression recognition and gaze behaviour, and may have implications for understanding the ways in which emotion recognition abilities break down.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identification of Emotional Facial Expressions: Effects of Expression, Intensity, and Sex on Eye Gaze

2016

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“…If emotional expressions are indicators for underlying states that may require behavioral responses by the observer (see for controversial discussion, Russell et al, 2003; Barrett, 2011), the ability to detect fake emotional expressions should be important and evolutionarily adaptive (Schmidt and Cohn, 2001; Mehu and Scherer, 2012). The inability to distinguish between play-acted and spontaneous expressions is, therefore, counter-intuitive, but has also been found in previous studies (see for corresponding results, Ekman and O’Sullivan, 1991; Audibert et al, 2008).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Encoding Conditions Affect Recognition of Vocally Expressed Emotions Across Cultures

Jürgens¹,

Drolet²,

Pirow³

et al. 2013

Front. Psychol.

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Although the expression of emotions in humans is considered to be largely universal, cultural effects contribute to both emotion expression and recognition. To disentangle the interplay between these factors, play-acted and authentic (non-instructed) vocal expressions of emotions were used, on the assumption that cultural effects may contribute differentially to the recognition of staged and spontaneous emotions. Speech tokens depicting four emotions (anger, sadness, joy, fear) were obtained from German radio archives and re-enacted by professional actors, and presented to 120 participants from Germany, Romania, and Indonesia. Participants in all three countries were poor at distinguishing between play-acted and spontaneous emotional utterances (58.73% correct on average with only marginal cultural differences). Nevertheless, authenticity influenced emotion recognition: across cultures, anger was recognized more accurately when play-acted (z = 15.06, p < 0.001) and sadness when authentic (z = 6.63, p < 0.001), replicating previous findings from German populations. German subjects revealed a slight advantage in recognizing emotions, indicating a moderate in-group advantage. There was no difference between Romanian and Indonesian subjects in the overall emotion recognition. Differential cultural effects became particularly apparent in terms of differential biases in emotion attribution. While all participants labeled play-acted expressions as anger more frequently than expected, German participants exhibited a further bias toward choosing anger for spontaneous stimuli. In contrast to the German sample, Romanian and Indonesian participants were biased toward choosing sadness. These results support the view that emotion recognition rests on a complex interaction of human universals and cultural specificities. Whether and in which way the observed biases are linked to cultural differences in self-construal remains an issue for further investigation.

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“…In this context, the establishment of human facial features or expressions as biological adaptations requires a rigorous review of current knowledge on the “normal” variation patterns, which is a basic preliminary step to test any evolutionary hypothesis [45]. …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socioeconomic Status Is Not Related with Facial Fluctuating Asymmetry: Evidence from Latin-American Populations

et al. 2017

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The expression of facial asymmetries has been recurrently related with poverty and/or disadvantaged socioeconomic status. Departing from the developmental instability theory, previous approaches attempted to test the statistical relationship between the stress experienced by individuals grown in poor conditions and an increase in facial and corporal asymmetry. Here we aim to further evaluate such hypothesis on a large sample of admixed Latin Americans individuals by exploring if low socioeconomic status individuals tend to exhibit greater facial fluctuating asymmetry values. To do so, we implement Procrustes analysis of variance and Hierarchical Linear Modelling (HLM) to estimate potential associations between facial fluctuating asymmetry values and socioeconomic status. We report significant relationships between facial fluctuating asymmetry values and age, sex, and genetic ancestry, while socioeconomic status failed to exhibit any strong statistical relationship with facial asymmetry. These results are persistent after the effect of heterozygosity (a proxy for genetic ancestry) is controlled in the model. Our results indicate that, at least on the studied sample, there is no relationship between socioeconomic stress (as intended as low socioeconomic status) and facial asymmetries.

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Human facial expressions as adaptations: Evolutionary questions in facial expression research

Cited by 79 publications

References 14 publications

Identification of Emotional Facial Expressions: Effects of Expression, Intensity, and Sex on Eye Gaze

Identification of Emotional Facial Expressions: Effects of Expression, Intensity, and Sex on Eye Gaze

Encoding Conditions Affect Recognition of Vocally Expressed Emotions Across Cultures

Socioeconomic Status Is Not Related with Facial Fluctuating Asymmetry: Evidence from Latin-American Populations

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