Separate and combined effects of facial expressions and bodily postures on emotional feelings

Flack, William F.; Laird, James D.; Cavallaro, Lorraine A.

doi:10.1002/(sici)1099-0992(199903/05)29:2/3<203::aid-ejsp924>3.0.co;2-8

Cited by 89 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Some people theoretically are more inclined to rely on their inner sensations, that is, their self-produced cues, in developing their knowledge of what emotion they are feeling, whereas others tend to rely more heavily on cues from the external circumstances in forming this knowledge. Having found that these individual differences are fairly general and stable over time (e.g., Flack et al, 1999), Laird and his colleagues, in many of their experiments, used the participants' responses to a preliminary assessment to divide them into either a selfproduced cue group or a situational-cue group and showed that the former participants' reported emotions typically were more strongly affected by the muscular movements they made. Duclos and Laird (2001) have argued that these differences in responsiveness to bodily cues can account for the inconsistent findings in studies as to whether expression inhibition can lessen emotional feelings.…”

Section: Effects Of Anger-related Muscular Movementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward an Understanding of the Determinants of Anger.

Berkowitz¹,

Harmon‐Jones²

2004

Emotion

494

417

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Research bearing on several popular conceptions of the major determinants of anger arousal indicates that the particular appraisals often identified as causes of anger frequently only serve to affect the intensity of the anger that is generated. Research into effects of physical pain or other physically unpleasant conditions or involving social stresses suggests that decidedly aversive conditions are a major spur to anger. Experiments are also reviewed showing that anger-related muscular movements can also lead to anger-related feelings, memories, cognitions, and autonomic responses. Alternative explanations for the findings are discussed. The authors urge emotion theorists to widen their methodology and analyses so that they give careful, detailed attention to the many different factors that can influence anger.A great many people are angry at one time or another. After surveying studies dating back to World War I, Averill (1982) concluded that "Depending upon how records are kept, most people report becoming mildly to moderately angry anywhere from several times a day to several times a week" (p. 1146). Perhaps because this emotion is so common, 1 specific definitions of this term often vary in detail (see Averill, 1982;Kassinove, 1995, for reviews of the many different usages of this word), and there are many different, and even opposing, cultural beliefs prescribing how and when this affective state should be managed.Although there certainly is no shortage of research articles dealing with anger, investigators inquiring into the development and functioning of emotions would do well to devote more of their effort and ingenuity to the study of this particular affective state. It obviously is a socially very important emotion, one that has attracted a great deal of attention in the mass media as well as in the various health fields, but it also presents emotion theorists with a number of intriguing conceptual questions. As just one example, there is the often-assumed relationship between hedonic valence and approach-avoidance inclinations. According to Watson, Wiese, Vaidya, and Tellegen (1999), positive affect is typically associated with approach tendencies, whereas negative arousal is usually linked to an urge to avoid the instigating stimulus. Anger seems to be relatively unique in this regard and is often associated with approach rather than with avoidance inclinations (see Harmon-Jones & Allen, 1998;Harmon-Jones & Sigelman, 2001). Then too, research into the conditions under which anger is aroused can also touch on the metatheoretical controversy as to whether emotions can be evoked independently of cognitions. Although we do not want to revive the now well-worn argument as to just what is involved in the concept cognition, if one adopts the relatively restricted definition favored by Izard (1993) and Zajonc Leonard Berkowitz and Eddie Harmon-Jones, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison.We thank the individuals who provided valuable comments on previous versions of this article: Jack B...

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Section: Effects Of Anger-related Muscular Movementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward an Understanding of the Determinants of Anger.

Berkowitz¹,

Harmon‐Jones²

2004

Emotion

494

417

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Bull's research demonstrated that specific patterns of bodily response correspond precisely to-or correlate with--specific familiar affective states. Thus, disgust, fear, anger, depression, triumph and joy--the six emotions generally considered by clinicians to be the basic emotions from which others are constructed (Duclos et al, 1989;Ekman and Rosenberg, 1998;Flack et al, 1999) --are each correlated with specific postural attitudes.…”

Section: In All…preparatory Attitudes the Involuntary Postural Preparmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Wolfflin's notion of modeling thus amounts to assuming various postures that have now been experimentally confirmed as generative of specific emotions. Neuroscientists following Bull (Duclos et al, 1989;Flack et al, 1999;Lackner and Graybiel, 1979;Morris, 2004) were able to precisely correlate bodily postures with subjectively felt emotions.…”

Section: In All…preparatory Attitudes the Involuntary Postural Preparmentioning

confidence: 99%

When the music moves you: Revisiting the classics in the company of neuroscience

Pashman¹

2014

J. Music Dance

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When the music moves you, you dance. The bodily movement that develops in response to music is what is here considered "dance." Philosophers have long understood music as possessing the power to move us. This paper employs Heinrich Wolfflin's theory of "sympathetic modeling"-a theory recently validated by neuroscientists' discovery of mirror neurons in humans-and Antonio Damasio's neurobiological model of emotion to establish the mediating links between music and the bodily movements made in response. The first "motion" elicited by hearing music is, as Wolfflin suggested, an unconscious "sympathetic modeling," an internal vocalization of what is heard; this activity involves muscular expansions and contractions. Signals of muscle movement are relayed to the brain by receptor cells imbedded in the muscles. In complex responses, the brain receives patterns of movement from throughout the entire body. When these whole-body kinesthetic sensations are made conscious as perceptions of a unified self, they enter awareness as subjectively felt emotion: the felt response to music. Such patterns of muscular stretching can be abstracted from the sort of external experience that produces emotion in ordinary life experience and reproduced at will. Thus, a dancer, by deliberately reproducing a pattern of muscle stretching, can re-create a chosen specific emotion. This activity constitutes "expressing" emotion in bodily movement. Performed in response to the emotion elicited by music, it is the expressive gesture of dance. One viewing the dance "understands" the emotion expressed by, once again, employing sympathetic modeling to reconstruct the internal pattern of movement associated with that emotion. In popular, social, dancing, dancers model one another's movements and, together, model the muscle tension patterns of particular rhythms and melodic lines; this situation is easily accounted for by what is now known about mirror neurons. Neuroscience thus explains what happens when the music moves you.

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“…), they report experiencing the corresponding emotion (disgust, anger, etc.) (Duclos and Laird 2001;Duclos et al 1989;Edelman 1984;Flack et al 1999;Kellerman and Laird 1982; for reviews, see Laird 2007;Niedenthal 2007;Niedenthal and Maringer 2009). Paula Niedenthal has surveyed extensive research indicating both that (1) that adopting emotionspecific facial expressions and postures influences preferences and attitudes (for example, subjects judge comic strips funnier when smiling, less funny when frowning, etc.…”

Section: Further Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…A number of other studies have manipulated postures and observed changes in feeling of depression, anger, fear, sadness, confidence and pride (see Berkowitz 1994;Duclos and Laird 2001;Duclos et al 1989;Flack et al 1999;Riskind 1984;Riskind and Gotay 1982;Stepper and Strack 1993).…”

Section: Further Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Dewey's Rejection of the Emotion/Expression Distinction

Krueger¹

Neuroscience, Neurophilosophy and Pragmatism

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organism in nature, the brain in the nervous system, the cortex in the brain is the answer to the problems which haunt philosophy". 1 More specifically, Dewey appropriates Darwin's naturalistic portrayal of emotions as reflected in bodily habits, or still-developing habits, oriented toward some practical end. For Dewey-following Darwin-emotions are aspects of ongoing patterns of action through which an organism successfully negotiates its biosocial world. This is their adaptive utility. 2 Dewey argues further that this agentive characterization of emotions, as we might term it, helps clarify their intentional character. Emotions involve an orientation or attitude toward some object or state of affairs: "[T]he full emotional experience…is always "about" or "toward" something; it is "at" or "on account of" something, and this prepositional reference is an integral phase of the single pulse of emotion". 3 Their teleological mooring is what distinguishes emotions from free-floating affect. For Dewey, emotions are thus both directed toward, and responsive to, features of the environment. Accordingly, highlighting the agentive and intentional character of emotions, Dewey insists, helps account both for the rationality of the behaviors associated with them as well as their capacity to further individual and communal life (i.e., their evolutionary significance) (Cunningham 1995, 866). As Dewey puts it-again following Darwin-emotional behaviors have been selected in virtue of their usefulness not merely for expressing felt experiences but rather for their utility "qua acts-as serving life", that is, as acts that have proven useful in the larger struggle for survival. 4 Emotions are in this way part and parcel of our situated agency.Despite this positive appropriation, Dewey nevertheless rejects parts of Darwin's theory.Specifically, Dewey rejects Darwin's serial characterization of "the relation of emotion to organic peripheral action [i.e., expression], in that it assumes the former as prior and the latter as secondary". 5According to Darwin, the emotion itself-its affective core, its felt aspect-exists antecedently to and independently from its behavioral expression. While bodily habits and specific behaviors reflect emotions, they are not, strictly speaking, parts of the emotions they reflect. Accordingly, emotions are

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Separate and combined effects of facial expressions and bodily postures on emotional feelings

Cited by 89 publications

References 32 publications

Toward an Understanding of the Determinants of Anger.

Toward an Understanding of the Determinants of Anger.

When the music moves you: Revisiting the classics in the company of neuroscience

Dewey's Rejection of the Emotion/Expression Distinction

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