Facial Expression Is Driven by Appraisal and Generates Appraisal Inference
Emotion researchers generally concur that most emotions in humans and animals are elicited by the appraisals of events that are highly relevant for the organism, generating action tendencies that are often accompanied by changes in expression, autonomic physiology, and feeling. Scherer’s component process model of emotion (CPM) postulates that individual appraisal checks drive the dynamics and configuration of the facial expression of emotion and that emotion recognition is based on appraisal inference with consequent emotion attribution. This chapter outlines the model and reviews the accrued empirical evidence that supports these claims, covering studies that experimentally induced specific appraisals or that used induction of emotions with typical appraisal configurations (measuring facial expression via electromyographic recording) or behavioral coding of facial action units. In addition, recent studies analyzing the mechanisms of emotion recognition are shown to support the theoretical assumptions.