Emotional reactions to a political leader's expressive displays.

Abstract

Forty college students viewed videotaped excerpts of happiness/reassurance, anger/ threat, and fear/evasion expressive displays by President Reagan. Within each display condition one excerpt was presented in image-only and one in sound-plus-image format. Emotional reactions were assessed by facial electromyography (EMG) from the brow and cheek regions and by skin resistance and heart rate. Following each excerpt, subjects also reported verbally the intensity of eight emotions. Self-reported emotions were influenced strongly by both the expressive displays and prior attitude toward Reagan as well as by media condition. Facial EMG indicated smiling during happiness/reassurance displays and frowning during anger/threat and fear/evasion displays, especially during image-only presentations. Display effects were also found for skin resistance responses when the media conditions were combined and for heart rate changes in the sound-plus-image condition. In contrast to the self-report measures, expressive and autonomic differences did not reveal an interaction between prior attitude and display condition. These results indicate that expressive displays had a direct emotional impact on viewers and that prior attitudes influenced retrospective self-reports of emotion but did not affect autonomic or facial muscle responses during stimulus exposure.