TY - JOUR
T1 - Emotion in the neutral face
T2 - A mechanism for impression formation?
AU - Adams, Reginald B.
AU - Nelson, Anthony J.
AU - Soto, José A.
AU - Hess, Ursula
AU - Kleck, Robert E.
N1 - Funding Information:
Correspondence should be addressed to: Reginald B. Adams, Jr., Department of Psychology, 544 Moore Building, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802-3103, USA. E-mail: radams@psu.edu This research was supported in part by a National Institute of Aging grant (NIMH Award # 1 R01 AG035028·01) to REK, UH, and RBA, Jr.
PY - 2012/4
Y1 - 2012/4
N2 - The current work examined contributions of emotion-resembling facial cues to impression formation. There exist common facial cues that make people look emotional, male or female, and from which we derive personality inferences. We first conducted a Pilot Study to assess these effects. We found that neutral female versus neutral male faces were rated as more submissive, affiliative, naïve, honest, cooperative, babyish, fearful, happy, and less angry than neutral male faces. In our Primary Study, we then "warped" these same neutral faces over their corresponding anger and fear displays so the resultant facial appearance cues now structurally resembled emotion while retaining a neutral visage (e.g., no wrinkles, furrows, creases, etc.). The gender effects found in the Pilot Study were replicated in the Primary Study, suggesting clear stereotype-driven impressions. Critically, ratings of the neutral-over-fear warps versus neutral-over-anger warps also revealed a profile similar to the gender-based ratings, revealing perceptually driven impressions directly attributable to emotion overgeneralisation.
AB - The current work examined contributions of emotion-resembling facial cues to impression formation. There exist common facial cues that make people look emotional, male or female, and from which we derive personality inferences. We first conducted a Pilot Study to assess these effects. We found that neutral female versus neutral male faces were rated as more submissive, affiliative, naïve, honest, cooperative, babyish, fearful, happy, and less angry than neutral male faces. In our Primary Study, we then "warped" these same neutral faces over their corresponding anger and fear displays so the resultant facial appearance cues now structurally resembled emotion while retaining a neutral visage (e.g., no wrinkles, furrows, creases, etc.). The gender effects found in the Pilot Study were replicated in the Primary Study, suggesting clear stereotype-driven impressions. Critically, ratings of the neutral-over-fear warps versus neutral-over-anger warps also revealed a profile similar to the gender-based ratings, revealing perceptually driven impressions directly attributable to emotion overgeneralisation.
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U2 - 10.1080/02699931.2012.666502
DO - 10.1080/02699931.2012.666502
M3 - Article
C2 - 22471850
AN - SCOPUS:84859631621
SN - 0269-9931
VL - 26
SP - 431
EP - 441
JO - Cognition and Emotion
JF - Cognition and Emotion
IS - 3
ER -