Emotion and the Face

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the ways in which a person’s face expresses the emotions they experience. Certain facial muscles are responsible for emotional expression. Paul Ekman and coresearchers (2009) grouped the outputs of these muscles into action units (AUs) and employed AUs in a facial action coding system (FACS) to describe discrete emotions. Instinct and learning both play roles in facial expressions of emotion, and it is possible to identify facial expressions that are meant to deceive.

Learning Exercises for This Chapter

6.1.1 Questions and Important Concepts for This Chapter

This section will help you review your learning for this chapter. It is composed of numbered questions (which are also the headings of this chapter). Concepts (important terms and phrases, labeled with letters) appear below most questions. These questions and concepts serve as an outline and summary of this chapter. If you have mastered the material in this chapter, you will be able to answer all the questions and define all the concepts. You should be able to answer each question in about 50 to 100 words and define each concept in about 20 to 50 words. Questions and concepts are best understood in the context of the entire chapter, and the information for answering them is always available within this chapter.

• 1. How are facial reactions to emotion the same as reactions in the rest of the body, and how are they different?

  • (a) Experiencing emotion

  • (b) Expressing emotion

  • (c) Autonomic nervous system

  • (d) Voluntary muscles

  • (e) Communicating function

  • (f) Conspecifics

• 2. When did Western psychology start studying facial expressions?

  • (a) Duchenne

  • (b) Faradize

  • (c) Darwin

  • (d) Ekman

• 3. Where does Ekman’s work stand compared to Darwin’s?

  • (a) Emotions can be measured in the face.

  • (b) Reflexive and spontaneous facial expressions.

  • (c) Voluntary or posed facial expressions.

• 4. What do we need to know about the muscles in the human face?

  • (a) Zygomatic major muscle

  • (b) Depressor anguli oris muscle

  • (c) Mentalis muscle

  • (d) Orbicularis occuli muscle

  • (e) Levator labii superioris muscle

  • (f) AUs

• 5. What are AUs?

  • (a) Reliably noticeable discrete movements

  • (b) Table 6.2

• 6. How do AUs combine to define emotions?

  • (a) AUs for Happiness

  • (b) AUs for Sadness

• 7. Do definitions based on AUs apply to all cultures and all ages?

  • (a) AUs are innate and therefore pancultural.

  • (b) Maturational trajectory.

• 8. What kind of arguments can be used to support the universality of basic emotional facial expressions?

• 9. How has Ekman applied his theory of facial expressions?

  • (a) Microexpressions

  • (b) Deception

  • (c) Pictures of facial affect

  • (d) Atlas of emotions

6.1.2 Experiential Learning Element 6.1: Facial-Feedback Hypothesis

For this ELE, which refers to the facial-feedback hypothesis, you will be acting as the participant. Because of this, I will give you instructions first and an explanation later.

• 1. Try looking into a mirror and smiling for 60 full seconds. Then note how you feel.

• 2. Now try looking into the mirror and looking really sad for 60 seconds. Then note how you feel.

• 3. Finally try looking into a mirror and looking really angry for 60 seconds. How did that feel?

Once you have tried out the posed emotions, consult Thomas, 2020, and answer the following questions:¹²

• 1. Did your facial expressions feel authentic or fake? How did you feel at the end of the pose? Did you perhaps experience flashes of emotion? (up to 100 words).

• 2. Did you notice any of the AUs that you employed to pose the emotions of Happiness, Sadness, and Anger? Could you name them? (up to 100 words).

• 3. What do you think of the theory of facial feedback? This theory suggests that as you pose an emotion, you begin to feel it. The face feeds back to your brain and you interpret the presence of an emotion. Did you experience facial feedback? (up to 200 words).

FYI: In a recent review article, Coles et al. (2019) noted the experimental evidence for the facial-feedback hypothesis, but they indicated that its effects are not super strong; these effects can be derailed by other factors. You do not have to include this in your answers, since I am asking about your opinions. This is just if you are interested.

6.1.3 Experiential Learning Element 6.2: Drawing Cartoonish Faces

This ELE examines drawing (or sketching) habits to see if they are related to the AUs described in Ekman’s theory. You could do this research yourself or you could ask a volunteer. Remember, if you ask someone to participate in your research, you need to describe what you will ask them to do and assure them of their rights to quit at any time and to remain anonymous.

• 1. Provide the volunteer with a page containing six egg shapes like the following:

  

• 2. Then ask the volunteer to draw six facial expressions—one on each egg shape. These expressions should represent Ekman’s six basic emotions: Happiness, Anger, Fear, Surprise, Disgust, and Sadness. Ask the volunteer to use simple line drawings rather than complex shadings and to label each expression. Make a copy of the page of drawings before going on to the next step because you will use it in the next ELE.

• 3. Now return to Table 6.3 and identify as many of the key AUs from this table as possible in each drawing. Do this by drawing arrows to the part of each drawing that illustrates the AU and providing the number of the AU. Not all AUs may be present in your drawings, but I am sure at least some of them will.

6.1.4 Experiential Learning Element 6.3: Identifying Drawings of Facial Expressions

This ELE is built on the preceding one. You will be using the facial drawings from ELE 6.2 (without labels) to see if participants can identify the emotion in each drawing.

• 1. For this ELE, use the drawings produced for ELE 6.2, or go to 6.2 and complete the first step. You should then have a page with sketched drawings of six emotional faces—Happy, Sad, Angry, Afraid, Surprised, and Disgusted.

• 2. Either cut out the labels of each emotion or mask them so that they are not visible.

• 3. Obtain the help of three to five volunteers. With their consent (and right of withdrawal and anonymity) assured, ask each of them to name the six emotions they see. You can say “Here are drawings of six emotions. Could you please name the emotion in each drawing?” Keep a record of your volunteers’ answers.

• 4. Enter your volunteers’ answers in the following summary table (Table 6.4):

Table 6.4 Identifying emotions

Now, you are able to answer some questions about how identifiable the drawings were. The first three questions should not take more than a few words each. The last one is a discussion question.

• 1. Which emotional drawing was recognized most often?

• 2. Which emotional drawing was recognized least often?

• 3. Were emotions confused with each other? Which ones and how much?

• 4. Discussion question (up to 330 words): Did AUs help in the communication of emotion through facial expressions? Do you think your volunteers were looking for specific AUs when making their identifications?

6.1.5 Experiential Learning Element 6.4: Action Units in Cartoons

Early animated television shows did not spend much time on facial expression. More modern ones do a better job. This ELE asks you to watch an animated show and identify action units in the characters’ expressions.

• 1. Choose an animated cartoon show to watch. You are going to be looking for the use of AUs to communicate emotion in the show. Pick something recent because very old shows were not that good at doing this. Watch the show for ten minutes and then rewatch it, looking for the use of facial AUs in the figures.

• 2. Describe what you found in about 250 words.

Note: What you find may depend on what type of show you watch. For example, Ekman was adviser to the movie Inside Out (Wikipedia, n.d., “Inside Out”), so you will likely find many AUs there. If you chose an anime cartoon, you will find they have a slightly different way of signaling emotion in the face.

6.1.6 Experiential Learning Element 6.5: How Easy Is It to Add Emotion to a Face?

In this ELE, you are given a picture of several doll-like figures. The ELE is designed to show you how easy it is to communicate emotion in the human face. Children over the age of five can try the ELE too (Fig. 6.3).

Fig. 6.3

Faceless dolls. (Note: Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/38451115@N04/6979771922 (Pascal, 2012))

• 1. Print a copy of the figure.

• 2. Put one emotional expression on the face of each doll. Starting from the left, make the faces express the emotions of Happiness, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust.

• 3. To put emotion on the faces, use ONLY the five following symbols:

( ) ( - . o right-facing bracket, left-facing bracket, dash, dot, and little o). You can use hand-drawn versions of the symbols.

• 4. Now try showing the dolls to a few people and asking them to decode (name) the emotions.

• 5. How easy was this task? What does this tell us about how well-trained most human beings are in creating and interpreting facial expressions of emotion? (Write up to 250 words.)

6.1.7 Mind-Benders for This Chapter

Each Mind-Bender asks a question that you cannot answer simply by reading this chapter. You will have to think beyond this chapter. Mind-Benders are prompts for long essay answers of 500 or more words. Even if you are not asked to write the full essay, think of each of these in terms of how you might answer them.

• 1. This chapter spent a good deal of time talking about the body before talking about the face. Do you think that facial expression is more important than bodily responses to emotion? And if your answer is yes, what is it more important for? If you answer is no, why not?

• 2. Over 100 years ago, it was suggested that people with short foreheads and low brows were “criminal types.” Do you think facial characteristics that are not caused by emotion (e.g., a naturally lowered brow, inherited long folds beside the nose, naturally squinty eyes) could present mistaken impressions of a person’s emotions and personality to those interacting with that person?

• 3. Is it equitable to videotape people when they are giving evidence in court and then to analyze their microexpressions in order to reach conclusions about their emotions and their deceptions?

• 4. Some of Ekman’s recent work has been focusing on Compassion, a concept that appears in many religions, including Buddhism. Imagine that there was a facial expression for Compassion. What would a Compassionate face look like? Describe it in terms of AUs. (Hint: think of Compassion as the opposite of Anger and Disgust, or as being related to Happiness, or both.)

• 5. Discuss clown makeup from the perspective of facial emotion theory.