Facial%20Expression:%20Predicting%20and%20promoting%20positive%20outcomes

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Facial Expression Predicting and promoting
positive outcomes

• Daniel Messinger, Ph.D.

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New topics

• Emotional Intelligence
• Positive Psychology
• Psychobiology of morality
• Sympathy and empathy
• Mother-toddler talk
• Emotion work Flight attendants
• Averill

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Tell me their story
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Questions

• How might positive emotion and its expression
  affect life outcomes?
• Describe how expressed emotion relates to
• Adolescent behavior problems
• The course of grieving in widows
• Life outcome in college women
• What is a functionalist emotion theory?
• What is emotion regulation?

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Positive Emotion

• The Broaden and Build Hypothesis
• Positive emotion perceptual and cognitive
  expansion
• Frederickson (1998)
• positive emotions build personal resources by
  fostering creative thinking, the readiness to
  take advantage of opportunities, the
  strengthening of social bonds, and the undoing of
  negative emotions. Harker et al., 2001

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Positive Emotions Trigger Upward Spirals
Fredrickson Joiner (2002)
Coping
Positive Affect
5 weeks
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Happiness Unpacked Positive Emotions Increase
Life Satisfaction by Building Resilience

• Cohn, Fredrickson, Brown, Mikels Conway (2009)

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Positive emotion ? ego resilience ? positive
emotion

• Positive emotion (PE) more implicated in theory
  than life satisfaction

• People who are happier achieve better life
  outcomes
• Broaden-and-Build Theory of positive emotion
• Broaden range of thoughts and actions
• Build resources for resilience
• Ego resilience an individuals ability to adapt
  to changing environments
• 120 students (mean 19 years) followed for 1
  month
• Daily emotions daily online diary submission
• 18 emotions 5-point Likert scale
• Negative (NE) and positive (PE) subscales
• Ego resilience 14 self-reported Likert-scale
  items
• Life satisfaction 5 self-reported Likert-scale
  items

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Findings

• Positive (but not negative) emotions predict
  increases in ego resilience and life satisfaction
• Positive emotions (but not life satisfaction)
  partially mediate the relation between initial
  and final ego resilience scores
• Indirect effect is significant for positive
  emotion not sig for life satisfaction (p gt .15)

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Findings

• Increases in ego resilience are responsible for
  the relation between PE and increased life
  satisfaction
• NE does not reduce the effects of PE
• When PE is greater, NE is worse predictor of
  resilience
• When NE is greater, PE is better predictor of
  resilience
• Are rising levels of PE necessary?
• No! Absolute levels matter more

ß1 .08, p .22
Negative ß1 .03, p gt .15 no significant
indirect effect Positive ß1 .09, p lt .01
significant indirect effect
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Importance

• Support for broaden-and-build theory
• PE? resilience growth ? life satisfaction
• PE better predictor than life satisfaction
• More resource building associated with PE
• Positive emotion different from lack of negative
  emotion
• PE predict growth in resilience and satisfaction
• PE at high levels buffer against effects of NE
• NE only predict growth in resilience
• Aggregate levels of PE more important for
  prediction than change in PE
• B-and-b theory suggests people respond to common
  experiences, not exceptional changes in emotion
• BUT day-to-day diaries better than global
  satisfaction rating

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One Mechanism Undoing
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Facial expressions and outcomes

• Facial expressions
• Convey emotion and orientation
• Elicit emotion and behavior in others
• Social referencing and the visual cliff
• Smiling is contagious
• But so is scowling

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Data

• Kindergarten
• Adolescent behavior
• Bereavement
• Year book photos
• Discussion of intervention strategies

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Smile Intensity and Warm Touch

• Differences in emotional expression are
  observable and predictive.
• Previous research shows personality trait
  relationships between parents and children.

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Kindergartener Photo Thin-slice Study(Oveis et
al., 2009)

• Thin-slice of nonverbal behavior reveals valid
  info about personality, IQ, sexual orientation,
  etc.
• Family expressivity in photos
• 91 kindergarteners
• Parent rating of temperament
• Extraversion, negative affect, effortful control
• Say cheese photo at school
• Positive affect (smile intensity mouth corners
  lid compression)
• Negative affect
• Family photo at home
• Amount of tactile contact
• Warmth of tactile contact

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Smile Intensity and Warm Touch

• What is the relationship between smiling and warm
  touch?
• Do parents and children resemble each other in
  facial displays of emotion posed pictures?
• Does extraversion/surgency covary with the
  intensity of positive emotional displays?

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Kindergarteners Family School Photos

• Cross-modality emotional communication
• ? Smile intensity in classroom home
• ? Warm family touch smile intensity
• in classroom home
• ? Total family touch smile intensity, parents
  affect
• Child-parent expressive similarity
• ? Father and child smile intensity
• Facial emotion display as thin slice of
  temperament?
• ? Smile intensity in classroom (not home)
  extraversion
• Girls warm family touch extraversion

Mother Father
Child ? ?
Girl ? ?
Boy ? ?
- No significant rs for effortful control or
negative affect
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Smile Intensity and Warm Touch

• Warmth of touch more important than quantity.
• Mixed results for the relationship between smile
  intensity and parents report of
  extraversion/surgency.

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Conclusions

• Supports validity of thin-slice approach
• Magnitude of correlation similar to self-report
  studies
• Importance of warm touch
• Correlation with increased smiling and decreased
  negativity of child
• Observed across contexts
• Underlying positive emotion for both D-smiles
  touch
• Quality more important than quantity
• Differences in expressivity with family and at
  school?
• Extraversion only related to school smiling
• More direct link with extraversion than effortful
  control?
• Limitations
• Correlational
• Effect of posing (but D-smiles still seen in
  school photos)

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Something about photos

• Crystallized self-representation to imagined/real
  other
• Role of mock negative emotions

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Adolescents

• Take an interactive IQ test
• Show embarrassment, anger, fear with examiner
• Related to teacher ratings of
• Externalizing (aggression)
• Internalizing (anxiety, withdrawal, somaticizing)

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Expressions by behavior rating
Expression Ratio Internalize (n9) Externalize (n9) Well-adjusted (n40)
Anger 0.10 0.23 0.07
Fear 0.15 0.05 0.17
Sadness 0.10 0.04 0.15
Embarrassment 0.14 0.16 0.22
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Expressions by behavior rating
Why?
Keltner et al., 1999
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Recently bereaved

• Talk about their loss at 6, 14, 25 months
• Angry facial expressions ? Later grief
• Duchenne (cheek-raise) laughers ? Later
• Higher emotional dissociation
• Report better association with significant other
• Viewed more positively by naïve observers
• Why?

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Duchenne laughter and recovering from bereavement
Keltner et al., 1999
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Yearbook pictures
and life
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Smile intensity self-reported personality
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Smile intensity other-reported personality
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Smile intensity and Observer Expected
Interactions (n114)
Observer Expectations Positive emotional expression
Expected positive emotions .70
Expected negative emotions -.57
Approach-acceptance .52
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Smile intensity and Life Outcomes
Life Outcome Positive expression Controlling for Attract./Social Desirability
Married by age 27 .19 .18/.16
Single into adulthood -.20 -.18/.20
Ever divorced .15 .15/.15
Personal Well-being
Age 21 (n112) .20 .20/.11
Age 27 (n86) .25 .26./.23
Age 43 (n105) .18 .19/12
Age 52 (n101) .27 .28/.24
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Intervening with childrens emotions

• Izard Structural model and intervention

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Overview

• Emotion centrality
• Noncognitive and nonconscious processes
• Socio-Emotional milestones
• Face-to-face interaction and attachment formation
  

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Social emotion tasks

• Infancy FTF interaction, nurturing
• Toddlers Embedding language description
• Early childhood Awareness of others
• Late childhood Anger modulation

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Pre-school tasks

• Awareness of others emotions
• What do you think Sally is feeling now?
• Distinguish and regulate negative emotions
• Shame vs. guilt vs. sad

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Intervention issues

• Cognitive versus Emotion based
• Are socio-emotional competencies a form of
  emotion or a form of intelligence
• Modulated expression
• Emotion modulation as a mediator or emotion
  expression
• Specific emotion versus General theme
• Happiness vs. Caring community
• Integration?

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Problems

• Low-road, automatic anger elicitation
• How to handle?
• Representativeness
• Head-start

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In children

• Emotion knowledge ? Social skills
• Unidirectional, .12,
• Effect on social preference of others is through
  social skills
• (Mostow et al)
• What is emotional intelligence

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Patterns

• Of emotions Shame anger
• Of qualities Anger and high impulsivity
• Different interventions for different kids

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Emotion communication and understanding in
childhoodA real-life problem

• Saarni

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Alternative views

• Functional
• Insight Recognition of function of emotions and
  their flexibility in functioning
• Regulating emotion to achieve goals
• Difficulty Use goals to interpret behavior but
  use behavior to infer goals
• Dynamic
• Insight Recognition of interfacing role of
  multiple components in emotional process
• Difficulty Specifying process

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Functionalist theory

• Emotion is the persons attempt or readiness to
  establish, maintain, or change the relation
  between the person and the environment on
  matters of significance to that person (Saarni et
  al., 1998).
• Emotion is associated with goal-attainment,
  social relationships, situational appraisals,
  action tendencies, self-understanding, self
  regulation, etc.

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Halloween Candy

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vWOlpdd7y8MI

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Critique of functionalism

• Definition is overly broad
• Circular reasoning
• How do you measure goals?
• What is a functionalist analysis of emotion in
  face-to-face play?
• Measurement of impact of emotional signal
• Similar to ethology

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Functionalist views

• Emotions come in families defined by these goals
• not by facial expression, or brain activity
• Messingers research is based on families of
  expressions and emotions
• Functional research focus
• socialization of emotional experience
• acquisition of emotional competence (Saarni),
• secondary emotions such as pride.

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Emotion regulation

• Modifying emotions to attain goals
• Sees emotions as
• flexible not stereotypical
• functional not disruptive
• responsive not rigid
• E.g., Impulse control, anger modulation,
  embarrassment, gift receipt.
• Flows from functional perspective
• See Thompson

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Critique of emotion regulation

• Inhibition or maintenance/intensification?
• Self or other regulation?
• Whats emotion and whats its regulation?
• Does functionalism wish to unite concepts?
• Is a regulated emotion the same emotion?
• Avoid premature judgements of good emotion
  regulation before we know its normative
  development and how to measure its adequacy

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Emotion regulation

• Understanding emotions
• Gender socialization
• Cultural emotion scripts
• Regulation and coping
• Empathy vs. sympathy
• Dissembling

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Themes

• Understanding emotions
• Developing complex accounts
• Symbolizing internal experience
• Self-awareness in guilt and shame
• Multiple emotions sequential and simultaneous

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Socialization and scripts

• Family rules
• High frequency emotion talk
• Dysregulation caused by others anger and abuse
• Boys anger girls distress
• Empathy vs. sympathy
• Dissembling