The emotion-facial expression link: evidence from human and automatic expression recognition
Anna Tcherkassof1, Damien Dupré2
1Psychology Department, Université Grenoble Alpes, Bâtiment Michel Dubois, 1251 Avenue Centrale, Saint-Martin-d'Hères, 38400, France. anna.tcherkassof@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr.
Psychological Research
|November 25, 2020
Summary
Facial expressions may not reliably reflect true emotions, challenging automatic emotion recognition. Research suggests emotions and their expressions are socially constructed, not innate, making recognition perceiver-dependent.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Computer Science
- Affective Science
Background:
- The link between subjective emotional states and outward facial expressions is debated.
- The "Basic Emotion View" posits innate, universally expressed emotions, while constructivist approaches see them as socially interpreted.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess the consistency between self-reported emotions and spontaneous facial displays.
- To compare human and automated facial expression recognition accuracy.
Main Methods:
- 232 videos of participants undergoing emotion elicitation were annotated by 1383 human perceivers.
- An automatic facial expression classifier (Affdex) also analyzed the videos.
Main Results:
- Weak consistency was found between self-reported emotions and displayed facial expressions.
- Both human perceivers and the automatic classifier showed low accuracy in inferring subjective feelings from facial cues.
- Findings support a perceiver-dependent, socially constructed view of emotion and expression.
Conclusions:
- The hypothesis of genetically hardwired emotions displayed universally is not well-supported.
- Emotion and facial expression appear to be primarily socially constructed.
- The validity of automatic emotion recognition tools relying solely on facial expressions warrants critical evaluation.
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