Facial signs of emotional experience.

Abstract

Spontaneous facial expressions were found to provide accurate information about more specific aspects of emotional experience than just the pleasant versus unpleasant distinction. Videotape records were gathered while subjects viewed motion picture films and then reported on their subjective experience. A new technique for measuring facial movement isolated a particular type of smile that was related to differences in reported happiness between those who showed this action and those who did not, to the intensity of happiness, and to which of two happy experiences was reported as happiest. Those who showed a set of facial actions hypothesized to be signs of various negative affects reported experiencing more negative emotion than those who did not show these actions. How much these facial actions were shown was related to the reported intensity of negative affect. Specific facial actions associated with the experience of disgust were identified. Current emotion theorists disagree about whether different emotions are characterized by distinctive bodily response system changes (e.g., autonomic nervous system [ANS] or facial expression patterning). Those who follow Schachter and Singer (1962) claim that cognitive expectations are the only important determinants of which emotion is subjectively experienced. ANS activity is not patterned but reflects the extent, not the type, of emotion that is aroused. This viewpoint has largely ignored the possibility that facial expressions might be a differentiated response system distinguishing among emotions. Those who disagree with Schachter and Singer do not share the same theory, but each has emphasized response system changes that are distinctive for each emotion: the ANS by Lazarus (1966) and facial expressions by