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Perceived emotional expressions of composite faces
Markku Kilpeläinen1, Viljami Salmela1
1Department of Psychology and Logopedics, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
Plos One
|March 11, 2020
Summary
Facial emotion recognition depends on how eye and mouth expressions are combined. Happy eyes can unexpectedly lead to negative perceptions, influencing how we interpret emotions.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Neuroscience
Background:
- The eyes and mouth are key facial regions for conveying emotional states.
- Understanding the relative importance of these regions is crucial for emotion identification.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess the distinct contributions of eye and mouth regions to recognizing various emotions.
- To investigate how congruent and incongruent facial expressions influence emotion perception.
Main Methods:
- Participants viewed composite faces with different eye and mouth expressions (Neutral, Anger, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Contempt, Surprise).
- Evaluated expressions within a valence-arousal emotion space and eye movements were tracked.
- Analyzed perception of congruent and incongruent facial stimuli.
Main Results:
- Most incongruent faces led to perceptions based on either eye or mouth expression, or an average.
- Happy eyes uniquely shifted perceived emotion towards a negative valence-arousal space.
- Eye-tracking data showed significant effects of expression congruency on attention.
Conclusions:
- Facial emotion perception from combined expressions depends on the specific emotions presented.
- The processing of incongruent facial cues, particularly 'happy eyes,' can lead to complex and sometimes counterintuitive emotional interpretations.
- This highlights the nuanced interplay between facial features in emotion perception.
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