Abstract
Embodiment theories have proposed a reciprocal relationship between emotional state and bodily reactions. Besides large body postures, recent studies have found emotions to affect rather subtle bodily expressions, such as slumped or upright sitting posture. This study investigated back muscle activity as an indication of an effect of positive and negative emotions on the sitting position. The electromyography (EMG) activity of six back muscles was recorded in 31 healthy subjects during exposure to positive and negative affective pictures. A resting period was used as a control condition. Increased muscle activity patterns in the back were found during the exposure to negative emotional stimuli, which was mainly measured in the lumbar and thorax regions. The positive emotion condition caused no elevated activity. The findings show that negative emotions lead to increased differential muscle activity in the back and thus corroborate those of previous research that emotion affects subtle bodily expressions.
Highlights
Emotional reactivity and bodily expression are fundamental to react appropriately to the environment (Darwin, 1972)
Wilcoxon signed-rank test comparing the subjective mood ratings after emotion induction to the baseline ratings revealed a significant difference of valence between the negative emotion condition and its baseline: z =
A significant positive correlation was found between the arousal ratings after the induction of the positive emotion
Summary
Emotional reactivity and bodily expression are fundamental to react appropriately to the environment (Darwin, 1972). Emotional reactions are an important tool for social communication (Levenson, 2003). Most studies have examined emotional expressions through muscle activation in the face. More recent studies have examined the importance of bodily expressions of emotions and found them valid to facial expressions for social interaction (De Gelder, 2009). Some researchers have even proposed that bodily expressions are crucial for successful emotion recognition (Tracy and Robins, 2004). De Gelder and Van den Stock (2011) provided a set of whole body expressions (faces blurred) of four emotions (anger, fear, happiness, and sadness) and showed that sadness was most likely recognized, followed by fear. That, perceiving the whole body was found to be crucial for emotion recognition. For example, significantly reduced the recognition of anger and fear; whereas removed arms showed no decreased accuracy in emotion recognition (Ross and Flack, 2020)
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