How We Recognize Angry and Happy Emotion in People,Places,and Things

Abstract

Darwin proposed and Ekman and Izard confirmed the presence of cross-cultural regularities in facial displays of emotion. Following their work, the author and his colleagues sought to find parallel mechanisms that would permit these displays to be decoded. A cross-cultural comparison of the display of anger and happiness in masks used in ritual social functions revealed that a set of geometric patterns, rather than actual facial features, conveyed these different emotional meanings. The power of nonrepresentational visual patterns to produce meaning was examined in a series of studies using materials that presented geometric shapes in a variety of line drawings, large-scale physical movement in classical ballet, and configurations among individuals in 17th-century Dutch art. Results across all studies suggested that for the emotions of anger and happiness, at least, meaning is carried in the geometric properties of the visual display.

Keywords

emotion expression emotion recognition Darwin Ekman multimethod sign stimuli

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Aronoff, J. (2005). The use of geometric configurations to convey emotional meaning in 17th century Dutch art. Manuscript in preparation.

Aronoff, J. , Barclay, A. M. , & Stevenson, L. A. (1988). The recognition of threatening facial stimuli. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 647-655.

Aronoff, J. , Woike, B. A. , & Hyman, L. M. (1992). Which are the stimuli in facial displays of anger and happiness? Configurational bases of emotion recognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 1050-1066.

Bassili, J. N. (1978). Facial motion in the perception of faces and emotional expression. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 4, 373-379.

Burgoon, J. K. , & Saine, T. (1978). The unspoken dialogue. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Crano, W. D. (1981). Triangulation and cross-cultural research. In M. B. Brewer & B. E. Collins (Eds.), Scientific inquiry and the social sciences (pp. 317-344). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Darwin, C. (1998). The expression of emotions in man and animals (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1872)

Davidson, R. J. , Scherer, K. R. , & Goldsmith, H. H. (Eds.) (2003). Handbook of affective sciences. New York: Oxford University Press.

Efron, D. (1972). Gesture, race, and culture. The Hague, the Netherlands: Mouton.

10.

Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I. (1989). Human ethology. New York: Aldine.

11.

Ekman, P. (1971). Universals and cultural differences in facial expressions of emotion. In J. Cole (Ed.) Nebraska symposium on motivation(pp. 207-283). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

12.

Ekman, P. (Ed.). (1982). Emotion in the human face (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

13.

Ekman, P. (2003). Emotions revealed: Recognizing faces and feelings to improve communication and emotional life. New York: Times Books.

14.

Ekman, P. , & Friesen, W. V. (1975). Unmasking the face: A guide to recognizing emotions from facial cues. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

15.

Ekman, P. , & Friesen, W. V. (1978). Facial action coding system (FACS): A technique for the measurement of facial action. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.

16.

Hansen, C. H. , & Hansen, R. D. (1994). Automatic emotion. In P. M. Niedenthal & S. Kitayama (Eds.), The heart’s eye (pp. 217-242). San Diego: Academic Press.

17.

Izard, C. E. (1971). The face of emotion. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

18.

Lorenz, K. (1943). The innate forms of potential experience. Zietschrift fur Tierpsychologie, 5, 233-409.

19.

Lundqvist, D. , & Ohman, A. (2005). Emotion regulates attention: The relation between facial configurations, facial emotion, and visual attention. Visual Cognition, 1, 51-84.

20.

McArthur, L. Z. , & Baron, R. M. (1983). Toward an ecological theory of social perception. Psychological Review, 90, 215-238.

21.

Mead, M. (1955). Preface. In C. Darwin (Ed.), The expression of the emotions in man and animals (pp. v-vi). London: John Murray.

22.

Osgood, C. E. , Suci, G. J. , & Tannenbaum, P. H. (1957). The measurement of meaning. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

23.

Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective neuroscience: The foundations of human and animal emotions. New York: Oxford University Press.

24.

Rohner, R. (1975). They love me, they love me not: A worldwide study of the effects of parental acceptance and rejection. New Haven, CT: HRAF.

25.

Zebrowitz, L. A. (1998). Reading faces. Boulder, CO: Westview.