Chapter 21 Introduction: Expression of Emotion

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Chapter 21Introduction Expression of Emotion
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• Charles Darwin (1872)
• Expression of emotion in man and animals
• Chapters in this part are similar to Darwin in
  particular the interest in
• The evolutionary history of expression
• Culture and universality
• The biological roots of expression
• The focus on discrete emotions

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• Ch22, 23, 24, 27
• Emotions are communicated in distinct facial and
  vocal displays and in language, and that this is
  so across different cultures and in different
  species.
• Ch26
• Whether and how emotion is communicated in music
• Ch25
• Emotion and misunderstood emotion inspires
  expression in pictorial arts, architecture, and
  literature

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Expression of emotion

• Most of the past research focused on the face,
  and most were judgment studies of a limited set
  of emotions.
• Little has been done on emotional expression in
  the voice, body, or language.
• These chapters reviewed the extensions and
  discoveries in the recent 20 years.

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Widespread critiques

• 1. Researchers have focused on a limited set of
  emotions. more emotions
• 2. Research has tended to focus on prototypical
  displays of emotions. Less systematic attention
  has been given to the variants of expression
  within any category.
• An array of related displays

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• Ch22 Facial expression of emotion (Keltner,
  Ekman, Gonzaga, Beer)
• Love, sympathy, amusement, and embarrassment
• Ch23 Vocal expression of emotion (Scherer,
  Johnstone, Klasmeyer)
• Ch24 Expression of emotion in nonhuman animals
  (Snowdon)
• Positive emotion (copulation calls food calls)
• Ch25 Creative expression and communication of
  emotion (Oatley) (art)
• Ch26 Emotional expression in music (Gabrielsson
  Juslin)
• Probabilistic relations to emotion (art)
• Ch27 Language and emotion (Reilly Seibert)
• (Widespread critiques)

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• Emotions are expressed multiple channels
• Odors
• Language facial expression gradually dovetail
  in their functions with development
• Different signals most certainly vary in their
  time courses gt questions about the boundaries of
  any particular emotional episode
• Different emotions may more reliably signaled in
  one modality than in another

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The perception of emotional expression

• Agreement across cultures in judgments of the
  expression of emotion in the face, voice, and
  music.
• Perception of emotion is much more complex than
  simply labeling an individuals behavior with an
  emotion term.
• Inference (How observers make inferences about
  traits from the expression of brief states, and
  whether they are accurate in these inferences?)

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• Expression evoke emotion in observers
• Evoked emotions are likely to play an important
  role in the judgment of emotional expression
• How do we perceive expressions of emotion?
• The perception of emotion is located in certain
  central nervous system structures, and that this
  localization may even be modality and
  emotion-specific.
• The units of meaning that facial expressions
  convey
• Categorical rather than dimensional
• How actively social observers perceive the
  expression of emotion, and how relatively little
  is known about this process
• When reading of a literary characters expression
  of emotion, readers experience emotion via mental
  simulation processes

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Expression in culture and context

• The extent to which emotional expression varies
  according to social context and culture.
• Context shapes emotional expression
• Basic features of the physical context dictate
  the nature and selection signals
• Social features such as the familiarity of
  individuals and their status relations also shape
  emotional expression
• Culture shapes how emotion is expressed and how
  it is interpreted

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Individual variation in expression

• Individuals vary, according to their personality,
  in how they express emotion in the face and voice.

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Theoretical developments

• Discrete and dimensional approaches to emotion
• Questions of how emotion is universal
• How it is culturally variable
• Individual differences in emotion

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• Snowdon
• Displays are reliable readouts of internal
  feeling and intended action
• Displays are deceitful and designed to manipulate
• Displays are dynamic processes that manage
  relations
• Emotions regulate important interactions in
  relationships as they unfold
• Sequences of expressions between individuals may
  be the more appropriate unit of analysis