Emotion in the neutral face: A mechanism for impression formation?

The current work examined contributions of emotion-resembling facial cues to impression formation. There exist common facial cues that make people look emotional, male or female, and from which we derive personality inferences. We first conducted a Pilot Study to assess these effects. We found that...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inCognition and emotion Vol. 26; no. 3; pp. 431 - 441
Main Authors Adams, Reginald B., Nelson, Anthony J., Soto, José A., Hess, Ursula, Kleck, Robert E.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England Taylor & Francis 01.04.2012
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Adult
Anger
Cognition
Cues
Emotion overgeneralisation
Emotional expression
Emotions
Face
Facial appearance
Facial Expression
Facial expressions
Fear
Fear & phobias
Female
Gender
Gender stereotypes
Humans
Impression formation
Impressions
Males
Photic Stimulation - methods
Pilot projects
Pilot studies
Ratings & rankings
Sex Characteristics
Social Perception
Stereotypes
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Summary:The current work examined contributions of emotion-resembling facial cues to impression formation. There exist common facial cues that make people look emotional, male or female, and from which we derive personality inferences. We first conducted a Pilot Study to assess these effects. We found that neutral female versus neutral male faces were rated as more submissive, affiliative, naïve, honest, cooperative, babyish, fearful, happy, and less angry than neutral male faces. In our Primary Study, we then "warped" these same neutral faces over their corresponding anger and fear displays so the resultant facial appearance cues now structurally resembled emotion while retaining a neutral visage (e.g., no wrinkles, furrows, creases, etc.). The gender effects found in the Pilot Study were replicated in the Primary Study, suggesting clear stereotype-driven impressions. Critically, ratings of the neutral-over-fear warps versus neutral-over-anger warps also revealed a profile similar to the gender-based ratings, revealing perceptually driven impressions directly attributable to emotion overgeneralisation.
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ISSN:0269-9931
1464-0600
DOI:10.1080/02699931.2012.666502