Abstract
Are there movement features that are recognized as expressing each basic emotion by most people, and what are they? In our previous study we identified sets of Laban movement components that, when moved, elicited the basic emotions of anger, sadness, fear, and happiness. Our current study aimed to investigate if movements composed from those sets would be recognized as expressing those emotions, regardless of any instruction to the mover to portray emotion. Our stimuli included 113 video-clips of five Certified Laban Movement Analysts (CMAs) moving combinations of two to four movement components from each set associated with only one emotion: happiness, sadness, fear, or anger. Each three second clip showed one CMA moving a single combination. The CMAs moved only the combination's required components. Sixty-two physically and mentally healthy men (n = 31) and women (n = 31), ages 19–48, watched the clips and rated the perceived emotion and its intensity. To confirm participants' ability to recognize emotions from movement and to compare our stimuli to existing validated emotional expression stimuli, participants rated 50 additional clips of bodily motor expressions of these same emotions validated by Atkinson et al. (2004). Results showed that for both stimuli types, all emotions were recognized far above chance level. Comparing recognition accuracy of the two clip types revealed better recognition of anger, fear, and neutral emotion from Atkinson's clips of actors expressing emotions, and similar levels of recognition accuracy for happiness and sadness. Further analysis was performed to determine the contribution of specific movement components to the recognition of the studied emotions. Our results indicated that these specific Laban motor components not only enhance feeling the associated emotions when moved, but also contribute to recognition of the associated emotions when being observed, even when the mover was not instructed to portray emotion, indicating that the presence of these movement components alone is sufficient for emotion recognition. This research-based knowledge regarding the relationship between Laban motor components and bodily emotional expressions can be used by dance-movement and drama therapists for better understanding of clients' emotional movements, for creating appropriate interventions, and for enhancing communication with other practitioners regarding bodily emotional expression.
Highlights
In this study, we aimed to investigate emotion recognition from movement using the framework and language of Laban Movement Analysis (LMA)
Fifteen out of 18 movement components significantly increased the likelihood that a clip will be recognized as the expected emotion, one component decreased the likelihood that a clip which contains it will be recognized as the expected emotion and two components out of the 18 tested increased the likelihood that a clip which contains them will be recognized as expressing an emotion different from the expected emotion (Table 2)
We set out to establish whether emotions could be recognized from brief glimpses of movement components associated with those emotions, and next to identify which, if any, components were more significant to recognition of emotion than others
Summary
We aimed to investigate emotion recognition from movement using the framework and language of Laban Movement Analysis (LMA). 1225–1229) asked participants to rate the valence (positive or negative) and the intensity of the expressions of high-level tennis players at losing or winning situations They chose these situations, because such situations tend to evoke strong affective responses. Participants failed to correctly rate “winning faces” as more positive and “losing faces” as more negative when they saw faces alone, but succeeded when they watched the body and face or only bodily expressions Their results indicated that during peak emotional situations, facial expressions of negative and positive valence may overlap, and when this occurs, people use bodily expressions to infer the valence of the expressed emotion
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