Happiness Judgments Research Articles

Methodological Variations to Explore Conflicting Results in the Existing Literature of Masking Smile Judgment.

Although a smile can serve as an expression of genuine happiness, it can also be generated to conceal negative emotions. The traces of negative emotion present in these types of smiles can produce micro-expressions, subtle movements of the facial muscles manifested in the upper or lower half of the face. Studies examining the judgment of smiles masking negative emotions have mostly employed dichotomous rating measures, while also assuming that dichotomous categorization of a smile as happy or not is synonymous with judgments of the smile's authenticity. The aim of the two studies was to explore the judgment of enjoyment and masking smiles using unipolar and bipolar continuous rating measures and examine differences in the judgment when instruction varied between judgments of happiness and authenticity. In Experiment 1, participants rated smiles on 7-point scales on perceived happiness and authenticity. In Experiment 2, participants rated the smiles on bipolar 7-point scales between happiness and a negative emotion label. In both studies, similar patterns were observed: faces with traces of fear were rated significantly less happy/authentic and those with traces of anger in the brows were rated significantly happier/more authentic. Regarding varied instruction type, no effect was found for the two instruction types, indicating that participants perceive and judge enjoyment and masking smiles similarly according to these two instructions. Additionally, the use of bipolar scales with dimensions between a negative emotion label and happiness were not consistently effective in influencing the judgement of the masking smile.

No Peace for the Wicked? Immorality Is Thought to Disrupt Intrapersonal Harmony, Impeding Positive Psychological States and Happiness.

Why do people think that someone living a morally bad life is less happy than someone living a good life? One possibility is that judging whether someone is happy involves not only attributing positive psychological states (i.e., lots of pleasant emotions, few unpleasant emotions, and satisfaction with life) but also forming an evaluative judgment. Another possibility is that moral considerations affect happiness attributions because they tacitly influence attributions of positive psychological states. In two studies, we found strong support for the second hypothesis. Moral considerations only appear to affect happiness attributions when they also affect attributions of positive psychological states. Additionally, both studies supported a hypothesis about why moral judgments have these effects. Specifically, we found that when people judge that someone is living a bad life, they infer that the person is not at peace with themselves. However, when this inference is blocked, moral considerations do not affect attributions of happiness or positive psychological states. In sum, although "happiness" appears to be a purely psychological concept, happiness judgments are sensitive to moral considerations because people often assume that immorality disrupts intrapersonal harmony.

Self-transcendence or self-enhancement: People’s perceptions of meaning and happiness in relation to the self.

We all desire to have meaningful experiences in life, but what factors give rise to perceptions of meaning? Across seven preregistered studies (total N = 1362), we examined the role of self-transcendence (i.e., benefits to society) and self-enhancement (i.e., benefits to the self) in people's judgments of meaning, in comparison with their judgments of happiness. We found that people weighed benefits to society more heavily than benefits to the self when evaluating the meaning of different jobs (Study 1), other people's life (Study 2a), and advice given to others (Study 2b). In contrast, benefits to the self were weighed similarly to (Studies 1 and 2) or even more heavily than benefits to society (Study 3) in people's judgments about happiness, suggesting people's meaning judgment is more self-transcendent than happiness judgment. Similar differences between meaning and happiness were found in participants' first-party perceptions of their own jobs (Study 4), advice intended to improve their own lives (Study 5), and actual feelings of completing a behavioral task (Study 7), except that self-enhancement played a relatively bigger role in first-party meaning judgments than in third-party meaning judgments (Studies 4-6). The results consistently suggest that people's meaning perceptions are more self-transcendent than their happiness perceptions (Studies 1-7). Our findings help illuminate the social-cognitive processes underlying people's perceptions of meaning, as well as shed light on the similarities and differences between people's conceptualizations of meaning and happiness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The role of movement kinematics in facial emotion expression production and recognition.

The kinematics of peoples’ body movements provide useful cues about emotional states: for example, angry movements are typically fast and sad movements slow. Unlike the body movement literature, studies of facial expressions have focused on spatial, rather than kinematic, cues. This series of experiments demonstrates that speed comprises an important facial emotion expression cue. In Experiments 1a–1c we developed (N = 47) and validated (N = 27) an emotion-induction procedure, and recorded (N = 42) posed and spontaneous facial expressions of happy, angry, and sad emotional states. Our novel analysis pipeline quantified the speed of changes in distance between key facial landmarks. We observed that happy expressions were fastest, sad were slowest, and angry expressions were intermediate. In Experiment 2 (N = 67) we replicated our results for posed expressions and introduced a novel paradigm to index communicative emotional expressions. Across Experiments 1 and 2, we demonstrate differences between posed, spontaneous, and communicative expression contexts. Whereas mouth and eyebrow movements reliably distinguished emotions for posed and communicative expressions, only eyebrow movements were reliable for spontaneous expressions. In Experiments 3 and 4 we manipulated facial expression speed and demonstrated a quantifiable change in emotion recognition accuracy. That is, in a discovery (N = 29) and replication sample (N = 41), we showed that speeding up facial expressions promotes anger and happiness judgments, and slowing down expressions encourages sad judgments. This influence of kinematics on emotion recognition is dissociable from the influence of spatial cues. These studies demonstrate that the kinematics of facial movements provide added value, and an independent contribution to emotion recognition.

Judgments of happiness during trail running: Pleasure, engagement, and meaning

ObjectivesIt has been theorized that happiness is derived from three major, unique sets of life experience: pleasure, engagement, and meaning. The present study examined the mental processes by which individuals combined five information cues (relatedness, autonomy, competence, mental vitality and physical vitality) when judging the degree of happiness felt by a trail runner during a run. Design/methodThe participants (104 adult male athletes; Mage = 32.70; SD = 10.86) rated pleasure, engagement, and meaning in 32 scenarios built from combinations of these cues. ResultsThe results of multivariate and univariate analyses of variance indicated that all five cues had a positive effect on judgments of pleasure, engagement, and meaning. The participants used three different information integration rules, depending on the pathway to happiness being probed. ConclusionsThe information integration and the integration rules highlighted the different contributions of pleasure, engagement, and meaning in cognitive building of happiness.

How to tell a happy person: Accuracy of subjective well-being perception from texts

Although perceptions of subjective well-being (SWB) in unacquainted others have been shown to play a major role in impression formation, little is known about how accurate such perceptions are. In two original studies and one pre-registered replication, we explored the accuracy of life satisfaction and happiness judgments from texts and its underlying mechanisms (use of linguistic cues). Participants filled in life satisfaction and happiness measures and completed a brief writing task. Another sample of participants judged the targets’ life satisfaction and happiness from the obtained texts. All three studies demonstrated a small to moderate self-other agreement. A linguistic analysis showed that targets with higher (vs. lower) scores on SWB were less likely to use negation words in their texts, which allowed observers to make accurate judgment of their SWB level. Two studies pointed at negative emotion words as valid and positive emotion words as invalid (but often used) cues to happiness, yet these effects did not replicate in Study 3.

The effect of mood on judgments of subjective well-being: Nine tests of the judgment model.

Life satisfaction judgments are thought to represent an overall evaluation of the quality of a person's life as a whole. Thus, they should reflect relatively important and stable characteristics of that person's life. Previous highly cited research has suggested that transient factors, such as the mood that a person experiences at the time that well-being judgments are made, can influence these judgments. However, most existing studies used small sample sizes, and few replications have been attempted. Nine direct and conceptual replications of past studies testing the effects of mood on life satisfaction judgments were conducted using sample sizes that were considerably larger than previous studies (Ns = 202, 200, 269, 118, 320, 401, 285, 129, 122). Most of the 9 studies resulted in nonsignificant effects on life satisfaction and happiness judgments, and those that were significant were substantially smaller than effects found in previous research. (PsycINFO Database Record

RETRACTED: Unlocking Past Emotion

In the research reported here, I examined whether the verbs applied to descriptions of past emotional experiences influence present mood and happiness. Participants who described a positive experience using the imperfective aspect, which implies ongoing progression, subsequently reported more positive mood and greater happiness than did participants who described a positive experience using the perfective aspect, which implies completion; likewise, participants who described a negative experience using the imperfective aspect subsequently reported more negative mood and less happiness than did participants who described a negative experience using the perfective aspect. These effects were traced to enhanced memory for the described emotional experience in the imperfective condition relative to the perfective condition. The findings demonstrate how formal features of language shape both the reinstatement of past affective reactions and happiness judgments, and may have practical applications for improving subjective well-being.

Incremental Validity of Alexithymia, Emotional Coping and Humor Style on Happiness and Psychological Well-Being

This study attempts to ascertain whether alexithymia, suppression and reappraisal coping, and humor styles account for incremental variance in happiness (Lyubomirsky’s scale) and psychological well-being (Ryff’s scale), after controlling for Big Five traits and emotional positivity ratio of previous day’s mood. A total of 355 psychology undergraduates (72 % women) responded to measures of each construct, and two hierarchical multiple regressions were carried out for happiness and psychological well-being. The Big Five were entered in the first regression block, alexithymia was entered in a second block, and affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive and self-defeating humor style, reappraisal and suppression coping were entered in the third block, and previous day’s mood in the last step. Alexithymia accounted for a small proportion of variance in psychological well-being, controlling for the Big Five traits. Suppression and affiliative, self-enhancing and self-defeating humor explained a complementary amount of variance in happiness and psychological well-being, controlling for the previous day’s mood, confirming the association of emotional regulation and affect with judgments of happiness and well-being. Taking into account humor and suppression, the multivariate association of alexithymia disappears. Results suggest that low suppression, low self-critical use of humor and affiliative humor are correlates of psychological well-being, whereas self-enhancing humor and low suppression are correlates of happiness, playing a mediational role between personality traits and well-being.

De-Biasing the Age-Happiness Bias: Memory Search and Cultural Expectations in Happiness Judgments Across the Lifespan

While most research shows increasing happiness across the adult life-span, there is a common and persistent misconception that happiness decreases with age. In two experiments, we found evidence to suggest that this age-happiness bias results in part from a biased search for exemplars in memory. When provided with specific exemplars, aged 30 or 70, showing clear evidence of an active and sociable lifestyle, happiness estimates were unaffected by age. However, we also found evidence that the bias may influence judgments by invoking different standards for young and old. Among participants in the United States in Experiment 1, a negative lifestyle description resulted in negative happiness ratings for a 30 year-old and neutral ratings for a 70 year-old, suggesting that the lifestyle was considered normative for the older adults. Among Irish participants in Experiment 2, we found no such distinction, arguably because of cultural differences in social expectations across the generations. These studies help to reveal the judgment mechanisms behind the age-happiness bias, and identify the boundaries of this persistent bias.

Dissociable Neural Pathways Are Involved in the Recognition of Emotion in Static and Dynamic Facial Expressions

Facial expressions of emotion powerfully influence social behavior. The distributed network of brain regions thought to decode these social signals has been empirically defined using static, usually photographic, displays of such expressions. Facial emotional expressions are however highly dynamic signals that encode the emotion message in facial action patterns. This study sought to determine whether the encoding of facial expressions of emotion by static or dynamic displays is associated with different neural correlates for their decoding. We used positron emission tomography to compare patterns of brain activity in healthy men and women during the explicit judgment of emotion intensity in static and dynamic facial expressions of anger and happiness. Compared to judgments of spatial orientation for moving neutral facial expressions, the judgment of anger in dynamic expressions was associated with increased right-lateralized activity in the medial, superior, middle, and inferior frontal cortex and cerebellum, while judgments of happiness were associated with relative activation of the cuneus, temporal cortex, and the middle, medial, and superior frontal cortex. In contrast, the perception of anger or happiness in static facial expressions activated a motor, prefrontal, and parietal cortical network previously shown to be involved in motor imagery. The direct contrast of dynamic and static expressions indicated differential activation of visual area V5, superior temporal sulcus, periamygdaloid cortex, and cerebellum for dynamic angry expressions and differential activation of area V5, extrastriate cortex, brain stem, and middle temporal cortical activations for dynamic happy expressions. Thus, a distribution of neural activations is related to the analysis of emotion messages in the nearly constant biological motion of the face and differ for angry and happy expressions. Static displays of facial emotional expression may represent noncanonical stimuli that are processed for emotion content by mental strategies and neural events distinct from their more ecologically relevant dynamic counterparts.

Judgments of happiness, brightness, speed and tempo change of auditory stimuli varying in pitch and tempo.

William G. CollierThe University of Texas at TylerTimothy L. HubbardTexas Christian UniversityThe effects of pitch height, tempo, and pitch contour (ascending and descend­ing C major scale) on ratings of happiness, brightness, speed and tempo changewere examined. Higher pitch tones (1046.4 Hz [C6]) were rated as happier,brighter, faster and as speeding up more than lower pitch tones (261.6 Hz[C4]). Tones at a faster tempo (120 beats per minute, bpm) were also rated ashappier, brighter, faster and as speeding up more than tones at a slower tempo(60 bpm). In addition, ascending tones (from the C major scale) were rated asbeing happier, brighter, faster and as speeding up more than descending tones(from the C major scale). In addition to these main effects, there are a numberof interactions on ratings indicating that some characteristics of music maycombine in different ways to produce different perceptions of music. The datareplicate and extend previous studies on music and affect.For centuries humans have enjoyed the experience of music, and musichas been an integral part of our lives. Allof us have felt shivers tingle up ourspines when a certain tune is played. We experience what seems to be aninstant emotional response to a few notes played in a certain way, but whatis it in music that calls forth our emotions so readily? The relationshipbetween music and emotion has been an area of speculation for some time,and the question of how music may evoke emotional responses has beenaddressed in several ways (for reviews, see Radocy

An analysis of the encoding and decoding of spontaneous and posed smiles: The use of facial electromyography

Twenty subjects judged 80 video segments containing brief episodes of smiling behavior for expression intensity and happiness of the stimulus person. The video records were produced under instructions to (a) pose, (b) experience a happy feeling or (c) to both experience and show a happy feeling. An analysis of the integrated facial electromyogram (EMG), recorded over four muscle regions (zygomaticus major, depressor anguli oris, corrugator supercilii, andmasseter), showed that judgments of happiness and of intensity of expression could be predicted in a multiple regression analysis (multipleR = .64 for perceived happiness and .79 for perceived expression intensity). The perception of happiness was affected by EMG activity in regions other thanzygomaticus major. The use of parameters other than the mean of the integrated EMG, namely variance, skewness, kurtosis and properties of the amplitude distributions across time, provided accurate classification of the elicitation conditions (pose happiness versus experience happiness) in a discriminant analysis. For the discrimination of posed and felt smiles variables describing aspects of facial activity in the temporal domain were more useful than any of the other measures. It is suggested that facial EMG can be a useful tool in the analysis of both the encoding and decoding of expressive behavior. The results indicate the advantage of using multiple-site EMG recordings as well as of using amplitude and temporal characteristics of the facial EMG measures.

Assessing Influences on One's Own Judgments: Is There Greater Accuracy for Either Subjectively Important or Objectively Influential Variables?

This research examined whether people have privileged knowledge of influences on their own judgments and whether either the subjective importance or the objective strength of these influences affects the accuracy of people's self-reports. Forty subjects rated people they knew on ten life-situation variables and then judged each person's happiness. Actors then assessed the relationship between each variable and their happiness judgments. Subjective importance was manipulated by yoking pairs of actors so that both worked with the same variables, which one actor had previously chosen as subjectively important and the other actor had not. To examine whether actors' self-reports were more accurate for influential than noninfluential variables, we used a new accuracy measure that allowed us to look at within-subject relationships between each variable's influence and the actor's accuracy for that variable. Neither the subjective importance nor the objective influence of the variables affected the accuracy of actors' self-reports. A control group of 24 observers received a brief description of the actors' task and then guessed how actors would think their judgments were related to each variable. Actor-observer comparisons, in conjunction with other analyses we performed, indicated that actors based their self-reports at least partly on private information and that this information did in fact cause their reports to be more accurate than those of observers.

Children's Use of Expressive and Contextual Cues in Judgments of Emotion

REICHENBACH, LISA, and MASTERS, JOHN C. Children's Use of Expressive and Contextual Cues in Judgments ofEmotion. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1983, 54, 993-1004. In 2 experiments, preschool and third-grade children judged the happy, sad, angry, or neutral emotional states of other children on the basis of expressive cues alone (slides of children's facial expressions), contextual cues alone (vignettes describing the stimulus children's emotion-inducing experiences), or both expressive and contextual cues. Older children were more accurate than younger only when given multiple cues. For children of both ages, contextual cues led to greater accuracy in the recognition of emotional states than did expressive cues. When multiple cues were inconsistent with one another, younger children relied more on expressive cues, while older children preferred contextual ones. Children from disrupted families were less accurate in judging emotion in peers, and their misjudgments involved fewer judgments of happiness and more judgments of anger. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive-developmental and social learning processes influencing children's judgment of emotion in others.