Body Cues, Not Facial Expressions, Discriminate Between Intense Positive and Negative Emotions
Joy or Pain?
Face recognition and processing are so completely central to human social interactions that these functions are supported by specialized regions in the brain. One of the fundamental aspects being processed is emotion, particularly whether the emotion being expressed is positive or negative. Nevertheless, neuroimaging studies have documented that perceiving opposite emotions often activates the same or overlapping regions. Aviezer et al. (p. 1225) report that the recognition of positive versus negative emotions actually relies on information communicated by the body—the extent to which perceivers identified joy versus grief in composite figures was driven by whether the body came from a joyous (versus grievous) image rather than the face.
Abstract
The distinction between positive and negative emotions is fundamental in emotion models. Intriguingly, neurobiological work suggests shared mechanisms across positive and negative emotions. We tested whether similar overlap occurs in real-life facial expressions. During peak intensities of emotion, positive and negative situations were successfully discriminated from isolated bodies but not faces. Nevertheless, viewers perceived illusory positivity or negativity in the nondiagnostic faces when seen with bodies. To reveal the underlying mechanisms, we created compounds of intense negative faces combined with positive bodies, and vice versa. Perceived affect and mimicry of the faces shifted systematically as a function of their contextual body emotion. These findings challenge standard models of emotion expression and highlight the role of the body in expressing and perceiving emotions.
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Supplementary Material
Summary
Materials and Methods
Fig. S1
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Science
Volume 338 • Issue 6111 • 30 November 2012
Pages: 1225 - 1229
History
Received: 4 May 2012
Accepted: 15 October 2012
Copyright
Copyright © 2012, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
