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The Influence of Family Expressiveness, Individuals’ Own Emotionality, and Self-Expressiveness on Perceptions of Others’ Facial Expressions

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Abstract

To examine individual differences in decoding facial expressions, college students judged type and emotional intensity of emotional faces at five intensity levels and completed questionnaires on family expressiveness, emotionality, and self-expressiveness. For decoding accuracy, family expressiveness was negatively related, with strongest effects for more prototypical faces, and self-expressiveness was positively related. For perceptions of emotional intensity, family expressiveness was positively related, emotionality tended to be positively related, and self-expressiveness tended to be negatively related; these findings were all qualified by level of ambiguity/clarity of the facial expressions. Decoding accuracy and perceived emotional intensity also related positively with each other. Results suggest that even simple facial judgments are made through an interpretive lens partially created by family expressiveness, individuals’ own emotionality, and self-expressiveness.

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Notes

  1. We use the term, emotionality, in this paper, to refer to the construct of affect intensity. Although we prefer to use given terms for constructs, we were concerned about the resulting confusion from the multiple constructs using “intensity” as a term. In addition to affect intensity, “intensity level” refers to increases of morphed emotional intensity in the facial expressions participants observed, and “perceived emotional intensity” refers to the judgments made by participants about others’ facial intensity.

  2. Models were also run separately by valence, that is, for positive family expressiveness, emotionality, and self-expressiveness, and then again for negative family expressiveness, emotionality, and self-expressiveness. Results were so similar that we combined them for ease in presentation to the reader. These separate models are available by contacting the first author.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Amy Cook and Megan Marvel Cranfill for their aid in data collection. We thank Julie Dunsmore, Monica Harris, Kevin Leary, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on drafts of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, 27695-7650, USA

    Amy G. Halberstadt & Paul A. Dennis

  2. Department of Psychology, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany

    Ursula Hess

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  1. Amy G. Halberstadt
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  2. Paul A. Dennis
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  3. Ursula Hess
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Correspondence to Amy G. Halberstadt.

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Halberstadt, A.G., Dennis, P.A. & Hess, U. The Influence of Family Expressiveness, Individuals’ Own Emotionality, and Self-Expressiveness on Perceptions of Others’ Facial Expressions. J Nonverbal Behav 35, 35–50 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-010-0099-5

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