TY  - JOUR
A1  - Lobmaier, Janek S.
A1  - Fischer, Martin H.
T1  - Facial Feedback Affects Perceived Intensity but Not Quality of Emotional Expressions
T2  - Brain Sciences
N2  - Motivated by conflicting evidence in the literature, we re-assessed the role of facial feedback when detecting quantitative or qualitative changes in others’ emotional expressions. Fifty-three healthy adults observed self-paced morph sequences where the emotional facial expression either changed quantitatively (i.e., sad-to-neutral, neutral-to-sad, happy-to-neutral, neutral-to-happy) or qualitatively (i.e. from sad to happy, or from happy to sad). Observers held a pen in their own mouth to induce smiling or frowning during the detection task. When morph sequences started or ended with neutral expressions we replicated a congruency effect: Happiness was perceived longer and sooner while smiling; sadness was perceived longer and sooner while frowning. Interestingly, no such congruency effects occurred for transitions between emotional expressions. These results suggest that facial feedback is especially useful when evaluating the intensity of a facial expression, but less so when we have to recognize which emotion our counterpart is expressing.
KW  - embodied cognition
KW  - emotional expression
KW  - emotion recognition
KW  - facial feedback
KW  - face morphing
Y1  - 2015
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/9641
SN  - 2076-3425
VL  - 5
IS  - 3
SP  - 357
EP  - 368
PB  - MDPI AG
CY  - Basel
ER  -