Lecture 3:
Emotion and Facial Behaviour:
The key assumption of the social functions argument is that other people’s facial
expressions are informative. People who are interacting can get a better insight
into what we are thinking and feeling and what we are more likely to do,
therefore making them able to adjust their behaviour accordingly. This makes
our interactions more fluid. There should therefore be a relationship between
what we feel and what we express.
What do facial expressions express?
Ekman et al:
Facial expressions express internal emotional states (other things being equal).
The type, duration, and intensity of the expression should reflect the quality and
strength of the underlying emotional experience.
Neurocultural theory:
Argues that there is a close link between emotion and facial behaviour.
Activation of an emotion triggers a neural programme that produces both the
subjective experience of emotion and patterned physiological and expressive
changes.
It is possible for culture-specific ‘display rules’ to moderate the strength of the
relationship between emotion and
expression.
There won’t always be a tight
relationship, sometimes the culture rules
will override or weaken the relationship.
Emotion elicitors (actual or anticipated
situations; recollections) are linked to
facial appearance.
o Facial Affect Programme: basic
emotions- tend to be happy, sad, anger,
surprise, disgust and fear. What makes
these emotions basic is the patterning in the face and the neural basis. If facial
affect programme is triggered, you get not just an experience of the emotion
but also a pattern on the face.
o Display rules: these are the rules that tell us what to do with our face, e.g.
exaggerate, minimize, counteract, camouflage. Display rules intervene
between the facial affect programme and the facial appearance. With enough
display rule learning, a male might have learnt to minimise responsiveness to
emotions.
The Tenets of the Neurocultural Model:
The facial affect program “links each primary emotion to a distinctive patterned
set of neural impulses to the facial muscles” (Ekman, 1972, p. 216)
The program, when activated, normally leads to the contraction of a fixed, partly
innate configuration of facial muscles, via a “mechanism which stores the
Emotion and Facial Behaviour:
The key assumption of the social functions argument is that other people’s facial
expressions are informative. People who are interacting can get a better insight
into what we are thinking and feeling and what we are more likely to do,
therefore making them able to adjust their behaviour accordingly. This makes
our interactions more fluid. There should therefore be a relationship between
what we feel and what we express.
What do facial expressions express?
Ekman et al:
Facial expressions express internal emotional states (other things being equal).
The type, duration, and intensity of the expression should reflect the quality and
strength of the underlying emotional experience.
Neurocultural theory:
Argues that there is a close link between emotion and facial behaviour.
Activation of an emotion triggers a neural programme that produces both the
subjective experience of emotion and patterned physiological and expressive
changes.
It is possible for culture-specific ‘display rules’ to moderate the strength of the
relationship between emotion and
expression.
There won’t always be a tight
relationship, sometimes the culture rules
will override or weaken the relationship.
Emotion elicitors (actual or anticipated
situations; recollections) are linked to
facial appearance.
o Facial Affect Programme: basic
emotions- tend to be happy, sad, anger,
surprise, disgust and fear. What makes
these emotions basic is the patterning in the face and the neural basis. If facial
affect programme is triggered, you get not just an experience of the emotion
but also a pattern on the face.
o Display rules: these are the rules that tell us what to do with our face, e.g.
exaggerate, minimize, counteract, camouflage. Display rules intervene
between the facial affect programme and the facial appearance. With enough
display rule learning, a male might have learnt to minimise responsiveness to
emotions.
The Tenets of the Neurocultural Model:
The facial affect program “links each primary emotion to a distinctive patterned
set of neural impulses to the facial muscles” (Ekman, 1972, p. 216)
The program, when activated, normally leads to the contraction of a fixed, partly
innate configuration of facial muscles, via a “mechanism which stores the
