Asymmetry in updating of emotion inferences from faces and situations

Our inferences about others' emotions often unfold over time as the information accessible to perceivers changes. Yet little is known about these dynamic aspects of emotion inference, including how flexible inferences are with different types of new information. In an integrated analysis of five studies (N_total = 925), we examined how people update their inferences of emotions with sequentially unfolding face and situation cues. Using a set of diverse social situations and their portrayals by professional actors, we found robust evidence for an asymmetry in how inferences were updated. People were more likely to update their inference of what emotions someone is feeling and how intensely they are experiencing those emotions when first viewing faces compared to descriptions of situations. This suggests that emotion inferences drawn from faces are more malleable compared to those drawn from social situations, and future work is warranted to understand whether this inflexibility tracks with people's beliefs and behaviors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).