Emotional Expressions Reconsidered: Challenges to Inferring Emotion From Human Facial Movements
The source that carries the piece. It was commissioned by a journal whose purpose is to tell non-specialists what a literature supports, and written jointly by a constructionist, a cognitive neuroscientist, two computer scientists and a developmental psychologist, addressed to consumers of emotion research. Barrett and colleagues conclude in the executive summary that specific emotion categories (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise) are each expressed with a particular configuration of facial movements, more reliably than chance would predict, but that, contrary to the common view, these expressions are not reliable and specific enough across contexts, individuals and cultures to count as diagnostic displays of any emotional state. They add that human perceivers likewise do not infer emotion from muscle configurations in a reliable and specific way that generalises. The abstract grants that people do sometimes smile when happy, frown when sad and scowl when angry.
The source that carries the piece. It was commissioned by a journal whose purpose is to tell non-specialists what a literature supports, and written jointly by a constructionist, a cognitive neuroscientist, two computer scientists and a developmental psychologist, addressed to consumers of emotion research. Barrett and colleagues conclude in the executive summary that specific emotion categories (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise) are each expressed with a particular configuration of facial movements, more reliably than chance would predict, but that, contrary to the common view, these expressions are not reliable and specific enough across contexts, individuals and cultures to count as diagnostic displays of any emotional state. They add that human perceivers likewise do not infer emotion from muscle configurations in a reliable and specific way that generalises. The abstract grants that people do sometimes smile when happy, frown when sad and scowl when angry.
Written from the read at source: abstract and executive summary in full, introduction, the scope section including the four criteria and Table 2, the whole expression-production review for adults, the automated-algorithm section, Table 3 in full, and the newborn, infant, child and congenitally blind sections from the Glasgow accepted manuscript. Not read: the perception review and the closing summary and recommendations.
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Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
Barrett, L. F., Adolphs, R., Marsella, S., Martinez, A. M., & Pollak, S. D. (2019). Emotional Expressions Reconsidered: Challenges to Inferring Emotion From Human Facial Movements. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 20(1), 1-68. doi:10.1177/1529100619832930