Recent Advances in Understanding Facial Expression Processing: New Methods, Measures and Models

A special issue of Behavioral Sciences (ISSN 2076-328X). This special issue belongs to the section "Cognition".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2024) | Viewed by 1807

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON K1N 5Y3, Canada
Interests: face processing; facial expressions; emojis; psychopathology; psychophysics; visual cognition

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The human face is arguably the most important visual stimulus we encounter on a daily basis. From each other's physiognomies we extract a wealth of socially vital information regarding identity, health, and attention, among much else. One of the most important types of information we garner from a face regards a person's emotional state. Researchers have been interested in gaining a scientific understanding of our ability to transmit emotional signals via facial muscle contractions since at least since Darwin. During the 20th century, the area of facial expression research has seen a number of important advances, including the proposal of the idea of universal expressions, the debate over face specialness, and the discovery of micro-expressions. More recent directions in facial expression research have been driven by social events, such as the need to wear face masks and communicate via video chat that emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, and the emergence of generative AI applications that can quickly render convincing (if often imperfect) images of human faces based solely on short verbal descriptions. Similarly, the move towards a greater consideration of diversity, equity, and inclusion has fostered increasing attempts to explore facial expression processing in a way that takes into account differences in ethnicity, culture, and gender. Such new ideas and directions are emerging continually in the facial expression literature, and this Special Issue aims to bring attention to them. These novel concepts include advances in the methodologies, measures, and models we employ in our ongoing endeavor to better understand how we send and receive information about our internal emotional states via our faces.

Prof. Dr. Charles Collin
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • facial expression processing
  • face processing models
  • measures of facial expression recognition performance
  • social cognition
  • generative AI
  • effects of race
  • effects of gender
  • effects of psychopathology

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 2787 KiB  
Article
Methodological Variations to Explore Conflicting Results in the Existing Literature of Masking Smile Judgment
by Annalie Pelot, Adèle Gallant, Marie-Pier Mazerolle and Annie Roy-Charland
Behav. Sci. 2024, 14(10), 944; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14100944 - 14 Oct 2024
Viewed by 575
Abstract
Although a smile can serve as an expression of genuine happiness, it can also be generated to conceal negative emotions. The traces of negative emotion present in these types of smiles can produce micro-expressions, subtle movements of the facial muscles manifested in the [...] Read more.
Although a smile can serve as an expression of genuine happiness, it can also be generated to conceal negative emotions. The traces of negative emotion present in these types of smiles can produce micro-expressions, subtle movements of the facial muscles manifested in the upper or lower half of the face. Studies examining the judgment of smiles masking negative emotions have mostly employed dichotomous rating measures, while also assuming that dichotomous categorization of a smile as happy or not is synonymous with judgments of the smile’s authenticity. The aim of the two studies was to explore the judgment of enjoyment and masking smiles using unipolar and bipolar continuous rating measures and examine differences in the judgment when instruction varied between judgments of happiness and authenticity. In Experiment 1, participants rated smiles on 7-point scales on perceived happiness and authenticity. In Experiment 2, participants rated the smiles on bipolar 7-point scales between happiness and a negative emotion label. In both studies, similar patterns were observed: faces with traces of fear were rated significantly less happy/authentic and those with traces of anger in the brows were rated significantly happier/more authentic. Regarding varied instruction type, no effect was found for the two instruction types, indicating that participants perceive and judge enjoyment and masking smiles similarly according to these two instructions. Additionally, the use of bipolar scales with dimensions between a negative emotion label and happiness were not consistently effective in influencing the judgement of the masking smile. Full article
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11 pages, 1454 KiB  
Article
Beyond the Whole: Reduced Empathy for Masked Emotional Faces Is Not Driven by Disrupted Configural Face Processing
by Sarah D. McCrackin and Jelena Ristic
Behav. Sci. 2024, 14(9), 850; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14090850 - 20 Sep 2024
Viewed by 726
Abstract
Sharing of emotional states is reduced for individuals wearing face coverings, but the mechanism behind this reduction remains unknown. Here, we investigated if face occlusion by masks reduces empathy by disrupting configural processing of emotional faces. Participants rated their empathy for happy and [...] Read more.
Sharing of emotional states is reduced for individuals wearing face coverings, but the mechanism behind this reduction remains unknown. Here, we investigated if face occlusion by masks reduces empathy by disrupting configural processing of emotional faces. Participants rated their empathy for happy and neutral faces which were presented in upright or inverted orientation and wore opaque, clear, or no face masks. Empathy ratings were reduced for masked faces (opaque or clear) as well as for inverted faces. Importantly, face inversion disrupted empathy more for faces wearing opaque masks relative to those wearing clear or no masks, which stands in contrast to the predictions generated by the classic configural processing models. We discuss these data within the context of classic and novel configural face perception models, and highlight that studying inverted occluded faces presents an informative case worthy of further investigation. Full article
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