Interpersonal Effects and Functions of Facial Activity

Abstract

This chapter discusses how and why facial activity affects other people. First, I distinguish three general functions relating to practical object-directed action, regulating interpersonal interaction, and coordinating two or more people’s orientations toward objects, events, or other people. Facial activity can also acquire secondary signal and symbolic functions, some of which relate to emotion communication. Second, I discuss interpersonal effects of gaze deriving from these functions. Gaze plays an important role in regulating social attention as a prior condition for many of facial activity’s other interpersonal effects, and in coordinating attention on referential objects at which orientations (including emotional orientations) are directed. Only some of these processes require decoding of emotional meanings. Finally, I discuss explicit and implicit processes underlying mimicry and social appraisal effects, concluding that facial activity other than gaze can also influence other people’s behavior in the absence of emotion attribution.