Do Facial Movements Express Emotions ( KRO -Individual) or Communicate Motives (KRO – Social)?
Brian Parkinson (2005)
Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9 (4), 278-311
Reviews the argument of whether ‘faces express emotions or communicate motives and intentions’, p278.
3 conclusions
- ‘many supposedly emotional facial movements cannot be explained simply in terms of emotions and display rules’ p278
- ‘some apparent advantages of the alternative motive-communication (face as a tool) account are partly undermined by its under specification of the central concepts of social motive and audience attunement’ p279
- ‘a fuller articulation of dynamic emotion processes in their interpersonal context may render many (but not all) of the distinctions between emotions and social motives redundant’p279
HISTORICAL
Darwin principles
note ‘ none of Darwin’s principles ( see underlined below) implies any intrinsic emotion-expression connection, because the movements originated from factors that happened to correlate with emotions rather than the emotions themselves……..In this sense, Darwin apparently did not believe that facial movements give direct and natural expression to an inner state’, p279-280. also Darwin considered expressions as vestiges presumably because he did not want to get into arguments about whether expression were windows to the soul
- ‘associated serviceable habits’ - over time, the movements that required a response as an adaptation to an emotional situation became associated with related feelings. P279 ‘more generally, faces that had once served a practical function also came to occur in situations where this function no longer applied’
- ‘antithesis’. Darwin was less secure about this principle but used submission versus state of fight as an example ‘movements that are in some way opposite to serviceable habits became associated with contrasting feeling states’, p279. ‘principle of action of the nervous system’
Parkinson, p280, ‘ setting aside Darwin’s unwarranted attempt to deny continuing functionality, he succeeded in identifying three general reasons why facial movements may be associated with emotions
- direct practical action that they serve (or once served) in emotional actions
- they provide (or once provided) information about the probability of emotional actions to other animals
- they are side effects of some extrinsic aspect of emotional function’,
Parkinson reports how Izard, 1990 proposed a fourth reason ‘ facial movements play a direct role in emotion regulation and control (Izard, 1990)’ Others (e.g. Tomkins) ‘believe that facial movement contribute to the production of emotion rather than as a consequence of emotion’, p280.
Summary p282 ‘ expressions have become associated with emotions for largely extrinsic reasons’
Dewey & Pragmatic actions i.e. facial movements as constituents of action.
Dewey emphasised p280 ‘ Darwin’s ideas about the direct functional significance of some facial movements in carrying out actions’ i.e. ‘direct practical functions of facial movements are more important in explaining origins than any accidental association with emotion’ Meaning to action is given by observers of the action.
Summary p282 ‘ facial movements make a direct contribution to practical actions during emotional episodes’ – ‘part of the process of acting emotionally’
Mead & Communication
Mead ‘Extended Darwinian ideas of the function of gestures by explicitly considering their social impact i.e. expression as a social signifier – ‘permits the distinctly human characteristics of self conscious mental life’ i.e. ‘ postural and facial movements allow mutual coordination of an ongoing social act’ (used two dogs circling each other as an example). P uses the term ‘articulated action sequence’ p281. ‘For Mead (1934) actions attain true symbolic significance when they call out identical responses in both actors and observers’ therefore implies language ‘ whereas facial movements do not offer the same visual information to actors and observers’ so at a more implicit level. Mirror neuron work could be significant here.
P282 Perceptible social effects of any movement change its functional character and thus impact on its meaning’ uses Vgotsky’s description of a child pointing as an example.
Summary p282 ‘ facial movements part of the process of communicating emotion-related information’
Ekman (1972) Neocultural theory ( allowed for both nature ( through natural selection) and nurture)
P283 ‘ some movements may have evolved precisely to express emotion rather than to serve other purposes that happen to be associated with emotional experience’ (latter is a Darwin view)
‘activation of an emotion initiates a facial affect program that sends efferent impulses to the face’ sees each basic emotion as giving rise to a different yet typical facial expression. Allowed for cultural experience. ‘assumes that perceivers either learn or instinctively know what these expressions mean.’
Gave rise to a focus on which aspects of facial expression are biologically determined. For example p283 ‘ facial changes whilst regurgitating unpleasant-tasting food became associated with the anticipation of objects to be rejected, more generally allowing their use in conveying rejection to others’
‘disgust as an emotion arose at some point’
‘Ekman did not see the disgust face as simply part of a rejecting action ( Dewey) or the communication of rejection ( Mead) but as an involuntary response that is part of the emotion of disgust itself.’
P303 ‘ The emotion-expression account explicitly restricts itself to explaining a small subset of facial movements and makes relatively precise predictions about the circumstances under which these movements occur’ some of which are turning out to be false e.g. smiling and happiness ( KRO is happiness as a basic emotion underspecified have basic emotions evolved to something more sophisticated or complex’
Summary ‘ For E main point of many facial movements is the expression of emotion.
Fridlund (1994) Behavioral Ecology Theory ( Communication of emotional state is more important than the expression of emotion)
Differs from Ekman in two basic ways
(i) purpose of facial movement is communication rather than expression. P284 ‘ intrinsically other-directed messages rather than individual reactions’
(ii) ‘content of communication is not directly about emotion but rather concerns behavioural intentions or social motives;’
leads to a view that there is no one to one mapping of emotion to facial display. – any connection is a fortuitous connection
F ‘saw facial movements developing as ritualised displays therefore progressive exaggeration is beneficial’ co-evolution for sender & receiver.
e.g.
- Eyebrow raising as an attentive act
- White of eye as a contrast to pupil for person tracking
but
there is facial movement while solitary.
Response
- Mead – generalised other
- Fridlund – can sociality ever be totally absent from a situation ? imagined others.
Compared to the emotion-expression account of E p305 ‘ the only facial movements explicitly excluded from this account are facial reflexes and some paralanguage)’ ‘greater inclusiveness comes at a cost to precision’
Summary ‘For F main point of facial movement is interpersonal communication’
PARKINSON CURRENT REVIEW
Evidence for direct emotion-expression connections ( Ekman neocultural)
Cross cultural consistency
of attribution of basic emotional facial expression regardless of the amount of prior exposure although recognition of happiness substantially more accurate than the recognition of disgust. However p287 ‘ Yik & Russel (1999) showed that participants from Canada, Hong Kong and Japan were able to allocate expressions to corresponding social motives about as successfully as to Ekman’s (1972) predicted basic emotions
developmental evidence
p287 “Eibl-Eibesfelddt (1973) showed that children born both deaf and blind adopt facial expressions such as ‘anger’ faces ‘ surprise faces and smiles in circumstances that would be plausible’
neurological evidence
P implies that localisation of a brain area would be important evidence but raises the question as to how one might design a study that would distinguish between the competing theories of F and E. Refers to Rinn’s work and interpretation p289 ‘ that separate motor control systems underlie deliberate facial movement and spontaneous expression of emotion’
‘Fridlund (1994) argued that this is not the only possible reading of neuropathological and neuro-anatomical evidence . In particular, he pointed out that separate mechanisms for deliberate and automatic control also characterise muscular movements in parts of the body other than the face’
Interpersonal influences - motive communication – Fridlund behavioural ecology
E (1972) p289 ‘ did not believe that other people are necessarily implicated in the initiation of facial movements. Instead the presence of others may invoke display rules encouraging modulation of expressive impulses that have already been activated’
P292 P ‘ our sense is often that the expressive impulse comes from deep within whereas expressive control is imposed on this impulse from elsewhere’
P304 ‘ the emotional meanings of canocical expressions are routinely taught in early schooling and reinforced by appropriate pictures in story books and children’s movies’
Audience facilitation
Krout & Johnston (1979) - recorded smiles during games of ten pin bowling. When facing pins smiling 5% of occasions even after a good performance whereas smiling was much more common when facing friends irrespective of the relative success in the game. However a valid evaluative comment is that ‘ we do not know to what extent these scores were good or bad for the bowlers concerned’ . Also observers were not instructed to differentiate between Duchenne & non Duchenne smiles.
Other work Fernandex-Dols & Ruiz-Belda involved observation of winning athletes during the medals ceremony when they are presumably experiencing intense happiness. However, the authors reported that smiling was rare apart from when the competitors were actively interacting with others.
Developmental
Jones, Collins & Hong (1991)
More smiles to mother than toys when mother was attentive. When an alternative audience was provided smiles were directed to that person if the mother was inattentive. But question remains as to how to disentangle emotional from social in these contexts.
Facilitation by imagined audiences
Fridlund (1991b) movie watch led to p295 ‘ we direct private displays at imagined others and these others are more available in imagination when they are sharing a similar experience’
Moderation of audience effects – when rather than whether other people increase or reduce facial movements.
F ‘ facial displays are always other directed’ p296. However interaction with others involves complex factors which area rarely investigated or taken into account message content
Facial movement other than smiling eg wincing. Bavelas et al, 1986 staged dropping a monitor onbto already bandaged finger. Wincing more likely when full on face to face interaction. KRO – is wincing a basic emotion?
Message appropriateness
P298 ‘ message appropriateness is a function of both the recipients identity and message content’
P299 ‘ display rules, social motives and emotions do not always represent mutually exclusive categories of phenomena that can be manipulated independent of one another’
Emotions v Social motives
P301 ‘ neither social motives nor emotions should be seen purely as private mental states. Both help to motivate action and play themselves out in the course of unfolding trans actions There is overlap between them they should not be seen as competing explanations of facial movements’
P303 P concluded that ‘ happiness does not seem to be a necessary or sufficient condition for Duchenne smiling (AU6+AU12) and Duchenne smiling does not provide cohesive evidence that the smile is happy’ ? also how to define happy p 303 ‘ no definitive empirical support for Ekman’s basic assumption that some facial movements are direct and spontaneous expressions of emotion’
What do facial movements really mean?
P305 ‘ it may be that facial movements have their origins in various practical actions, but that does not necessarily mean that evolution, culture, or some combination of the two have not co-opted them for other uses, so that their action relevance loses its centrality’ recognises Ekman’s distinction between spontaneous and deliberate.
Some have argued that facial movement has a rhetorical purpose but P see this as overstretched.
p306 ‘ facial communication carries two advantages that make it particularly suitable for some emotional purposes’
(i) not dependant on turn taking – rather provides ‘ a continuous stream of action and information that is attuned ( or disattuned) to corresponding streams generated by other people. For this reason, they can respond to, and affect, others’ relational positions on a moment-by-moment basis’
(ii) ‘ the connection between faces and some of the actions that they perform is less arbitrary and more direct than between verbal signifiers and their referential objects’ ‘if someone else is looking intently in a certain direction our immediate impulse is to look there too’
