Abstract
Do our background beliefs, desires, and mental images influence our perceptual experience of the emotions of others? In this paper, we will address the possibility of cognitive penetration (CP) of perceptual experience in the domain of social cognition. In particular, we focus on emotion recognition based on the visual experience of facial expressions. After introducing the current debate on CP, we review examples of perceptual adaptation for facial expressions of emotion. This evidence supports the idea that facial expressions are perceptually processed as wholes. That is, the perceptual system integrates lower-level facial features, such as eyebrow orientation, mouth angle etc., into facial compounds. We then present additional experimental evidence showing that in some cases, emotion recognition on the basis of facial expression is sensitive to and modified by the background knowledge of the subject. We argue that such sensitivity is best explained as a difference in the visual experience of the facial expression, not just as a modification of the judgment based on this experience. The difference in experience is characterized as the result of the interference of background knowledge with the perceptual integration process for faces. Thus, according to the best explanation, we have to accept CP in some cases of emotion recognition. Finally, we discuss a recently proposed mechanism for CP in the face-based recognition of emotion.
Highlights
Cognitive penetrability and emotion recognition in human facial expressionsReviewed by: Tom Froese, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico Dustin Stokes, University of Utah, USA
What is Cognitive Penetration? Does it Really Occur?Cognitive penetrability is a phenomenon that occurs if higher-level cognitive states, such as beliefs, desires, intentions, etc., can directly influence perceptual experience
Given the complex nature and extreme relevance of human faces in our perceptual life, it is an interesting question whether recognition of an emotion in a human face is achieved through a judgment made on the basis of perceptual experience, a purely perceptual automatic process, or an interaction between both that admits some degrees of cognitive penetration (CP)
Summary
Reviewed by: Tom Froese, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico Dustin Stokes, University of Utah, USA. After introducing the current debate on CP, we review examples of perceptual adaptation for facial expressions of emotion. This evidence supports the idea that facial expressions are perceptually processed as wholes. We present additional experimental evidence showing that in some cases, emotion recognition on the basis of facial expression is sensitive to and modified by the background knowledge of the subject. We argue that such sensitivity is best explained as a difference in the visual experience of the facial expression, not just as a modification of the judgment based on this experience.
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