The face is a picture of the mind
Cicero
Do we understand facial expressions in term of emotion or action tendencies?
Whether emotions (and which emotions) are associated with universally produced and recognised facial expressions is debated. As we've seen in previous posts, the classic and largely dominant view is that primary, basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust) are considered innate to all human populations and universally expressed and understood. In contrast, secondary emotions (of which guilt is one, along with embarrassment, shame, and contempt) are thought to differ significantly between cultures and acquired and developed gradually during childhood. Secondary emotions are more idiosyncratic and context-depend, which is why it has been harder to identify (production- and perception-wise) specific facial movements associated with the experience of those emotional states. This later ontogeny led scientists to think that secondary emotion do not have a prototypical expression. However, the evidence for strictly universal primary emotions, and culturally variable secondary emotions has been challenged and scientist still disagree on whether the face communicate basic emotions, action tendencies, or something entirely different.
Let's have a look at the main theories:
The Basic Emotion Theory argue for facial expression as signals indicating the emotion or internal state of the sender. The Behavioural Ecological View of facial expressions argues that facial expressions indicate the sender’s most likely future behaviours. Facial expressions benefit both the sender and receiver by reducing the need for conflict when interests are declared openly; as such, both primary and secondary emotions can be associated with specific, readable and recognisable, facial signals.
We've talked a lot about facial expressions of emotion in general, looking mainly at primary emotion. But my interest lies (as you probably gathered from previous post) in looking at guilt...
As secondary emotion, guilt can be heavily influenced by the socio-cultural context, and previous research indeed found marked differences between cultures. However, we do not know whether these differences are restricted to feelings/experiences of guilt, or also relate to its behaviour and function within social interactions. So, are the differences in what we are feeling or in what we are doing when feeling it. Most cross-cultural research in production and perception of facial expressions of emotions compare Western and Asian cultures. Chinese cultures seem to be more prone to feelings of guilt and more sensitive to their close relatives’ guilt than Westerners (i.e. European). They also exhibit greater motivation to repair disrupted relationships. However, it is not known whether the two cultures differ only in degree (how much), or whether they are also differing in their proneness to self-induced vs other-induced guilt. Chinese cultures are often structured by a sense of duty, where individuals are perceived as part of something bigger (family, company, country), when Western cultures tend to be based on a sense of self, where individuals are distinct entities praised for their uniqueness. Considering those differences, it could be hypothesised that individuals that grew up in an Asian society would be more prone to other-induced guilt than an individual raised in a Western society, who would then be more sensitive to self-induced guilt.
To date, there is no evidence that an expression of guilt is a genuine behavioural phenomenon; we do not currently understand the mechanism and function underlying the common impression that we can tell when someone feels guilty. We have no data on whether typical and specific non-verbal behaviours accompany feelings of guilt, whether others can see such expressions as reliable indicators of guilt, and whether this process affects social outcomes.
That is what I am looking at in my PhD research: is there a facial expression of guilt identifiable as such by people during social interactions?
This was the last post of "A story of emotion", presenting my academic research and interest. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed sharing it with you!
More posts to come on everything and nothing!
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