Ch. 11 Psychology in Action (Psych 5)

	Psychology, 5/e Wortman, Loftus & Weaver
	Online Learning Center

Chapter 11 - Motivation and Emotion

Psychology in Action

Judging Emotion from Facial Expression and Context

The evidence for the crucial role of the face in expression of emotion is quite strong. Anthropological studies support the notion of universal patterns of facial expression of emotion. However, the context also plays a central role, as can be seen in the crying at weddings and funerals: Facial expression may be identical, but the emotions are entirely different. This experiment will demonstrate how our judgments of emotions depend upon both facial expression and context.

Experimental Procedure

To do this experiment, you will need to look through some magazines for pictures of active, real scenes, each of which includes several people. (Do not select poses.) News magazines will be the best sources, because you will need a variety of events. You may, for instance, find a photograph of a marathon runner finishing a race, rioters clashing with police, people viewing exhibits in a museum, world leaders greeting each other, people working in a factory, scenes from war zones or funerals, and so on. You need to find pictures with one clear facial expression each, though there may be others in the picture. Try to find pictures expressing different emotions.

Once you have identified six good pictures, cut them out and mount each of them on the inside of a manilla folder in the following way: First, identify the face which most clearly conveys an emotion (the target face); then cut a hole in one side of the manilla folder just large enough so that the face, but no other part of the picture, will be visible when the face is laid behind it; finally tape the picture to the inside of the folder so that, when the folder is closed, the only part of the picture that is visible is the target face. As the last step, cut out a piece of paper the size of the hole in each folder so that, when it is laid on top of the target face, everything in the picture except the target face is visible. Finally, number the folders on the outside from 1 through 6.

To perform the experiment you will need five copies of the Rating Form and six copies of the Pleasure-Displeasure Emotional Intensity Rating Scale printed below, one each for each of six subject volunteers you enlist for this experiment. When you have prepared your materials and found your volunteers, you are ready to begin the experiment.

STEP 1 With your first subject, explain that what you want him or her to do is to look at the picture of each target face. (Keep the folder closed for this part of the experiment so only the target face is visible.) Then ask the subject to rate the face in folder 1 according to the pleasure or displeasure the subject thinks is communicated by the face. Show the subject the Pleasure-Displeasure Emotional Intensity Rating Scale to help the subject assign a numerical rating to each face. (Subjects may ask you to clarify what "pleasure" and "displeasure" mean: If this happens, simply tell them that they should use their own judgment in defining the words however they wish.) Record the subject's response in the appropriate place on the Rating Form under Condition F (Face only).

STEP 2 Repeat the process described above with each of the five remaining target faces.

STEP 3 Out of sight of the subject, shuffle the order of the folders and take the cut-out piece for each folder and lay it over the target person's face. Go back to the subject and ask the subject to evaluate the pleasure or displeasure of each of the scenes contained in the six folders, recording the response to each folder before you ask the subject to respond to the next. Place the subject's numerical responses in the boxes to the right of Condition C (Context only) on the Rating Form. (Since the folders were shuffled so as to be out of order, be sure you place the ratings in the proper boxes according to the number on each file folder.)

STEP 4 Reshuffle the order of the six folders again and this time remove the cut-out so the subject can see the entire picture. Ask the subject to evaluate the pictures one more time using the same pleasure-displeasure rating scale. Record the responses to each picture for Condition FC (Face plus Context).

STEP 5 Repeat steps 1-4 with Subject 2.

STEP 6 For Subjects 3 and 4, repeat the procedures as described above, except have these subjects rate Condition C first, Condition FC second, and Condition F last. Record their scores.

STEP 7 For Subjects 5 and 6, repeat the procedures, except have these subjects rate Condition FC first, Condition F second, and Condition C third. Record their scores.

STEP 8 Thank each subject for participating.

Analyzing the Data

STEP 1 Compute the average score for each subject for each of the three rating conditions (F, C, FC) by adding the six rating scores in each condition and dividing by 6. Record these averages in the box provided at the right of the table on each subject's Rating Form.

STEP 2 Transfer each subject's average ratings to the Data Record below.

STEP 3 Plot these ratings on the graph provided called the Pleasure-Displeasure Emotional Intensity Scale. You will have eighteen separate points on this graph, one for each subject, so be sure to use a different symbol for each subject. (Hint: Different color pens or markers are great for making this task easy.) Connect the points for each subject with lines, so that you have six lines on the graph.

STEP 4 Compute the Grand Average Rating for the three rating conditions by adding up the scores entered in each of the three columns in the Data Record and dividing by 6. Record these numbers in the appropriate boxes in the bottom of the Data Record.

Discussion

Examine carefully the data presented in the Data Record and plotted in the Pleasure-Displeasure Emotional Intensity Scale. What trends, if any, can you observe? Were universal facial cues or situations more likely to provoke strong emotion ratings? Were your subjects consistent in their judgments of the same face? Were they consistent in their judgments in the other conditions? Which condition (F, C, FC) produced the most inconsistent judgments (had the largest range between ratings on the Pleasure-Displeasure Scale)? Did subjects appear to have difficulty making judgments, or was this an easy task? Were judgments easiest for faces (F), for context situations (C), or for pictures with both faces and context present (FC)?

Why do you think you tested the conditions in different order with different subjects? Do you think familiarity with the stimuli may have made a difference in the way subjects responded? What conclusions would you draw from your data about how people evaluate the emotional content of a situation? Are faces more influential in our judgments? Are context cues? Or do both contribute to our judgments of emotion?

The study on which this experiment was based found that emotion judgments using faces, even when isolated from context, prompt explanations that are contextual. For instance, the subject might say: "He looks bored, as if he has just hear another dull lecture." This suggests that how we make judgments of emotion involves an appraisal of both the face value and the context value. The study also found that in some cases face may be more important, and in others context was critical. The conclusion drawn from this study was that neither the face nor the context alone is adequate because every emotion is expressed in some context.

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