Learning of Facial Responses to Faces Associated with Positive or Negative Emotional Expressions

Abstract

Esta es la versión de autor del artículo publicado en: This is an author produced version of a paper published in: El acceso a la versión del editor puede requerir la suscripción del recurso Access to the published version may require subscription Spanish Journal of PsychologyFaces and facial expressions of emotion have a critical role in human social interaction. Being able to extract socially relevant information from faces and to decode the meaning of facial expressions is crucial for a proper understanding of other´s feelings and intentions (e.g., Frith, 2007). The importance of our ability to read into other´s faces is underscored by studies describing deficits in the ability to extract social and affective information from faces in conditions such as autism and schizophrenia, where poor social adjustment is a prominent characteristic (e.g., Adolphs, Sears, & Piven, 2001;Kohler, Walker, Martin, Healey, & Moberg, 2010;Pelphrey et al., 2002). It has been repeatedly shown that viewing faces that show emotional expressions induces in the observer specific patterns of facial activity. While perception of happy or smiling faces tends to produce a response pattern characterized by increased activity of the zygomaticus major (ZM) muscle and decreased activity of the corrugator supercilii (CS), perception of angry faces usually leads to increased corrugator activity (e.g., Dimberg, 1982, Dimberg & Thunberg, 1998Dimberg & Ohman, 1996). These facial reactions are usually observed during the first second of exposure to an emotional expression and thus, have been called Rapid Facial Reactions (Moody, McIntosh, Mann, & Weisser, 2007). Although these reactions are usually sub-perceptual and are not visible to the naked eye, they can be detected by means of facial electromyography (EMG).Characterization of the mechanism underlying these reactions to facial expressions has been a matter of considerable debate. Some researchers have interpreted them in terms of social mimicry (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999; Lakin, Jefferis, Cheng, & Chartrand, 2003). By this account, perception of a specific facial expression automatically elicits a similar expression from the observer without any mediation by an emotional or evaluative process. For example, Chartrand and Bargh (1999) have proposed a perception-behavior link mechanism, by which perception of another´s behavior facilitates similar behavior in oneself. An alternative account considers facial reactions in the presence of emotional expressions as part of an affective reaction to the expressions themselves (Hess, Philippot, & Blairy, 1998;Moody et al., 2007). These reactions would thus be a consequence of a process involving affective evaluation and emotion recognition. Several pieces of evidence are consistent with this interpretation. Firstly, rapid facial reactions are Abstract. The possibility that facial expressions of emotion change the affective valence of faces through associative learning was explored using facial electromyography (EMG). In Experiment 1, EMG activity was regi...

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