Faking It Isn't Making It: Research Needs Spontaneous and Naturalistic Facial Expressions

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Facial expressions are crucial for social interaction.
• Current research often conflates distinct questions about expression production, emotional perception accuracy, and responses to expression appearance.
• Traditional research uses posed facial stimuli, which may not reflect genuine emotions or real-world complexity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To disentangle three key question types in facial expression research: production, perceptual accuracy, and response to appearance.
• To highlight the limitations of posed facial stimuli in accurately measuring emotional perception.
• To advocate for the use of naturalistic and spontaneous facial expression stimuli.

Main Methods:

• Conceptual analysis of research questions in facial expression studies.
• Review of existing literature on posed versus naturalistic/spontaneous facial stimuli.
• Presentation of new data on the perception of traditional facial stimuli.

Main Results:

• Posed facial stimuli are inadequate for assessing perceptual accuracy of internal emotions (Q2) and primarily measure responses to appearance (Q3).
• Exaggerated, posed stimuli can lead to ecologically invalid findings, even for Q3.
• Many posed stimuli are not perceived as genuinely emotional and appear unnatural.

Conclusions:

• Distinguishing between expression production, emotional perception, and response to appearance is critical.
• The field should transition to using naturalistic and spontaneous facial expression stimuli for more ecologically valid research.
• Seven recommendations are provided to advance facial expression research using more authentic stimuli.