The Influence of Postural Emotion Cues on Implicit Trait Judgements

Perceptions of traits (such as trustworthiness or dominance) are influenced by the emotion displayed on a face. For instance, the same individual is reported as more trustworthy when they look happy than when they look angry. This overextension of emotional expressions has been shown with facial expression but whether this phenomenon also occurs when viewing postural expressions was unknown. We sought to examine how expressive behaviour of the body would influence judgements of traits and how sensitivity to this cue develops. In the context of a storybook, adults (N = 35) and children (aged 5 to 8 years; N = 60) selected one of two partners to help face a challenge. The challenges required either a trustworthy or dominant partner. Participants chose between a partner with an emotional (happy/angry) face and neutral body or one with a neutral face and emotional body. As predicted, happy over neutral facial expressions were preferred when selecting a trustworthy partner and angry postural expressions were preferred over neutral when selecting a dominant partner. Children’s performance was not adult-like on most tasks. The results demonstrate that emotional postural expressions can also influence judgements of others’ traits, but that postural influence on trait judgements develops throughout childhood.

Emotion Residue in Neutral Faces: Implications for Impression Formation

Despite the prevalent use of neutral faces in expression research, the term neutral still remains ill-defined and understudied. A general assumption is that one’s overt attempt to pose a nonexpressive face results in a neutral display, one devoid of any expressive information. Ample research has demonstrated that nonexpressive faces do convey meaning, however, through emotion-resembling appearance. Here, we examined whether prior expressive information lingers on a face, in the form of emotion residue, and whether despite overt attempts to display a neutral face, these subtle emotion cues influence trait impressions. Across three studies, we found that explicit attempts at posing neutral displays retained emotion residue from a prior expression. This residue in turn significantly impacted the impressions formed of these otherwise “neutral” displays. We discuss implications of this work for better understanding how accurate impressions are derived from the so-called neutral faces and underscore theoretical and methodological considerations for future research.

Early language competence, but not general cognitive ability, predicts children’s recognition of emotion from facial and vocal cues

The ability to accurately identify and label emotions in the self and others is crucial for successful social interactions and good mental health. In the current study we tested the longitudinal relationship between early language skills and recognition of facial and vocal emotion cues in a representative UK population cohort with diverse language and cognitive skills (N = 369), including a large sample of children that met criteria for Developmental Language Disorder (DLD, N = 97). Language skills, but not non-verbal cognitive ability, at age 5–6 predicted emotion recognition at age 10–12. Children that met the criteria for DLD showed a large deficit in recognition of facial and vocal emotion cues. The results highlight the importance of language in supporting identification of emotions from non-verbal cues. Impairments in emotion identification may be one mechanism by which language disorder in early childhood predisposes children to later adverse social and mental health outcomes.