Effect-based control of facial expressions: Evidence from action–effect compatibility

• Published in: Psychonomic bulletin & review Vol. 18; no. 4; pp. 820 - 826
• Main Authors: Kunde, Wilfried, Lozo, Ljubica, Neumann, Roland
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer-Verlag 01.08.2011; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Affectivity. Emotion; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Biological and medical sciences; Cognitive Psychology; Experiments; Facial Expression; Feedback; Feedback, Psychological; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Interpersonal Relations; Personality. Affectivity; Photic Stimulation; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Psychomotor Performance; Reaction Time; Motor control; Emotions; Action control; Human; Affect affectivity; Emotional expression; Cognition; Emotion emotionality; Experimental study; Face; Motricity; Facial expression
• ISSN: 1069-9384; 1531-5320; 1531-5320
• DOI: 10.3758/s13423-011-0093-x

Facial expressions such as smiling or frowning are normally followed by, and often aim at, the observation of corresponding facial expressions in social counterparts. Given this contingency between one’s own and other persons’ facial expressions, the production of such facial actions might be the subject of so-called action–effect compatibility effects. In the present Experiment 1 , we confirmed this assumption. Participants were required to smile or frown. The generation of these expressions was harder when participants produced predictable feedback from a virtual counterpart that was incompatible with their own facial expression; for example, smiling produced the presentation of a frowning face. The results of Experiment 2 revealed that this effect vanishes with inverted faces as action feedback, which shows that the phenomenon is bound to the instantaneous emotional interpretation of the feedback. These results comply with the assumption that the generation of facial expressions is controlled by an anticipation of these expressions’ effects in the social environment.