Body And Facial Expressions Influence Mood
Christopher Philip
It is well understand that the face influences our moods. When people, even artificially, change their facial expressions, their mood tends to correspond to the emotions expressed. This is called the ‘facial feedback’ hypothesis. It is so termed because the face feeds back the relevant emotions experienced. Likewise, emotion is created within the mind and fed back to the face to create an emotional expression. Therefore, the systems feed back onto one another. At times this can produce a “feedback loop” which continue to amplify emotions. A person becomes angry, their facials expression reflects this, the person realizes their face is showing anger and they become even more upset.
The facial feedback hypothesis is well studied and understood. However, little is known about the ability of the body to feedback emotion – the so called “peripheral feedback” hypothesis. However, science is beginning to understand the link between the body and how it provides grounding for cognition.
Researcher William Flack, Bucknell University, Lewisburg devised a study to examine the effects of facial expression, bodily expressions as well as verbal cues of emotion to discern the feedback they would produce on emotion.
In a lab setting, subjects were told to adopt certain facial expressions and bodily expression as follows (feel free to try them yourself to see if they induce the correct feelings):
Facial expressions:
Anger: Push your eyebrows together and down. Clench your teeth tightly, and push your lips together.
Sadness: Relax your eyebrows, so that they drop down toward your cheeks. With your mouth closed, push your lower lip up lightly.
Fear: Raise your eyebrows, and open your eyes as widely as possible. Move your whole head back, so that your chin is tucked in a little. Let your mouth relax and hang open a little.
Happiness: Draw the corners of your mouth up and back, letting your mouth open a little.
Bodily postures:
Anger: Put your feet flat on the floor, directly below your knees, and put your forearms and elbows on the arms of the chair. Now clench your fists tightly, and lean your upper body slightly forward.
Sadness: Sit back in your chair, resting your back comfortably against the back of the chair, and draw your feet loosely in under the chair. You should feel no tension in your legs or feet. Now fold your hands in your lap, just loosely cupping one hand in the other. Drop your head, letting your rib cage fall, and letting the rest of your body go limp. You should feel just a slight tension up the back of your neck and across your shoulder blades.
Fear: Scoot to the front edge of your chair, and draw your feet together and underneath the chair. Now turn your upper body toward the right, twisting a little at the waist, but keeping your head facing forward. Now dip your right shoulder a bit, and lean your upper body slightly backward. Raise your hands to about mouth level, arms bent at the elbows, and palms facing forward.
Happy: Sit up as straight as you can. Put your hands at the ends of the armrests, and make sure that your legs are straight in front of you, with your knees bent, and feet right below your knees.
Vocal expressions:
Angry: Read this list of words as quickly and loudly as you can.
Sadness: Read this list of words as slowly and softly as you can.
Fear: Read this list of words as quickly and softly as you can.
Happiness: Read this list of words at moderate tempo and volume.
The Results
The results of the experiment found that facial expressions and bodily postures tended to produce like-effect on emotional feelings. However, the vocal expression were inconsistent. Also, facial expressions tended to show a stronger effect than bodily posture.
Felt anger, sadness, fear, and happiness were greatest when the facial expressions and bodily postures matched. Interestingly, ratings of surprise was the highest during the fear facial and bodily expression. This is likely due to the similarity of the two expressions.
During anger, happiness, and disgust, facial expressions were more positively correlated than body posture. Sadness facial and bodily expressions scored similarly. Facial expressions also scored higher in five out of six cases.
Drawing Conclusions
Facial expressions appear to make the strongest impact on emotional feelings, vocal expressions the weakest and bodily expressions lie somewhere in between.
Paying attention to ones facial expressions in controlling mood is likely the best recourse. Next in line is bodily expression and finally vocal expression.
The researchers admit that the cues are likely additive, meaning the more cues that are put together, the more one might feel the expressed emotion. I tend to agree.
Certainly, it is interesting to note that effects of posture on mood and actually observe the effects that they produce.
One can also draw the conclusion that when we see someone adopt an angry, sad or happy body expression, we can infer their emotional state reliably. As our minds produce emotion, our bodies display it, but when our bodies are artificially induced to produce emotion, we also tend to feel it.
Body language is a very powerful force, and the science is beginning to back it up with increasing frequency.
Resources
Flack, William F., Jr. Peripheral Feedback Effects of Facial Expressions, Bodily Postures, and Vocal Expressions on Emotional Feelings. Cognition and Emotion. 2006. 20 (2), 177-195. DOI:10.1080/02699930500359617