Abstract
The majority of research on emotion expression has focused on static facial prototypes of a few selected, mostly negative emotions. Implicitly, most researchers seem to have considered all positive emotions as sharing one common signal (namely, the smile), and consequently as being largely indistinguishable from each other in terms of expression. Recently, a new wave of studies has started to challenge the traditional assumption by considering the role of multiple modalities and the dynamics in the expression and recognition of positive emotions. Based on these recent studies, we suggest that positive emotions are better expressed and correctly perceived when (a) they are communicated simultaneously through the face and body and (b) perceivers have access to dynamic stimuli. Notably, we argue that this improvement is comparatively more important for positive emotions than for negative emotions. Our view is that the misperception of positive emotions has fewer immediate and potentially life-threatening consequences than the misperception of negative emotions; therefore, from an evolutionary perspective, there was only limited benefit in the development of clear, quick signals that allow observers to draw fine distinctions between them. Consequently, we suggest that the successful communication of positive emotions requires a stronger signal than that of negative emotions, and that this signal is provided by the use of the body and the way those movements unfold. We hope our contribution to this growing field provides a new direction and a theoretical grounding for the many lines of empirical research on the expression and recognition of positive emotions.
Highlights
The last 15 years have seen unprecedented interest in positive emotions, sustained, presumably, by the development of fields like positive psychology (Fredrickson and Joiner, 2002) and emotional intelligence (Quoidbach et al, 2010; Nelis et al, 2011)
While static facial expressions are sufficient for distinguishing negative emotions in most circumstances, we argue that the distinction between positive emotions critically requires additional information that is provided by the dynamics and body representations
The expression of emotions through body movements and gestures has been understudied in comparison to facial and vocal expressions [for a general discussion of the neurological basis of the perception of emotions from the body and for the reasons to consider bodily expressions in affective science, please see the works of de Gelder (2006, 2009)]
Summary
The last 15 years have seen unprecedented interest in positive emotions, sustained, presumably, by the development of fields like positive psychology (Fredrickson and Joiner, 2002) and emotional intelligence (Quoidbach et al, 2010; Nelis et al, 2011). In a quote from 1992 that outlines the problem and offers a possible solution, Ekman wrote, “One of the questions remaining about smiles is whether the different positive emotions In a recent study, Gold et al (2013) found that participants could recognize the traditional six basic emotions (including joy as the only positive emotion) with comparable accuracy regardless of whether they viewed the expressions as naturally evolving, temporally reversed, temporally randomized expressions, or as a single snapshot This result supports the hypothesis that dynamic information is not necessary for the correct recognition of basic negative emotions. While static facial expressions are sufficient for distinguishing negative emotions in most circumstances, we argue that the distinction between positive emotions critically requires additional information that is provided by the dynamics and body representations. We turn to recent empirical studies that seem to support our argument
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