Emotional facial expressive and discriminative performance and lateralization in normal young adults

Studies of cerebral dominance for posed emotional facial expression using free-viewing of hemicomposites have produced inconclusive findings, and the concordance of facial emotion identification (discrimination) and the expression of the same facial emotion remains unknown. Expressive and discriminative (14 men, 14 women) facial emotion performances of undergraduates and the lateralization of full-face and lower-face hemicomposite photographic montages of the expressions of six transcultural emotions (joy, sadness, fear, surprise, disgust, anger) as ascertained by 15 male and 15 female undergraduate judges were analyzed. All groups were matched for age and education. The lower face was non-significantly left-face dominant, sadness was strongly significantly right-face dominant and fear was non-significantly left face dominant. Both sexes were equally lateralized overall and demonstrated the same pattern as described above, though slight (apparently trivial) differences appeared in multivariate analysis, and in univariate interactions. Results were interpreted as non-supportive of a simple right hemisphere dominance model of facial affect, nor of a left-hemisphere-negative/right-hemisphere-positive model. It was concluded that facial affect dominance results are coherent only within, and not between, methods such as free viewing hemicomposite and tachistoscopic methods, and tasks, such as expressive and discriminative tasks.