The Theory Of Facial Feedback: Gestures That Create Emotions
Facial feedback theory proposes that facial movements associated with a certain emotion can influence affective experiences. It is one of the most representative theories of the psychological study of emotions and cognition, which is why it continues to be constantly discussed and experimented with.
In this article We will see what the theory of facial feedback is how it was defined and what some of its experimental verifications have been.
Facial feedback theory: does facial movement create emotions?
The relationship between cognition and affective experiences has been widely studied in psychology. Among other things, attempts have been made to explain how emotions occur, how we make them conscious, and what their function is at both an individual and social level.
Some research in this field suggests that affective experiences occur after we cognitively process a stimulus associated with an emotion. In turn, the latter would generate a series of facial reactions, for example a smile, that account for the emotion we are experiencing.
However, facial feedback theory suggests that the opposite phenomenon can also occur: perform movements with facial muscles related to a certain emotion, it has a significant impact on how we experience it; even without the need for intermediate cognitive processing.
It is called facial “feedback” theory, precisely because it suggests that facial muscle activation can generate sensory feedback to the brain ; issue that finally allows us to consciously experience and process an emotion.
The theory of facial feedback has its antecedents in the theories of the late 19th century, which prioritize the role of muscle activation. with the subjective experience of emotions.
These studies continue to this day, and have been developed significantly since the 1960s, at which time theories on affectivity gained special relevance in the social and cognitive sciences.
In a compilation on the background of the facial feedback theory, Rojas (2016) reports that in 1962, American psychologist Silvan Tomkins proposed that sensory feedback carried out by the muscles of the face, and sensations from the skin, can generate an experience or emotional state without the need for cognitive intercession. This represented the first major antecedent of facial feedback theory.
Later, the theories of Tournages and Ellsworth were added in 1979, who spoke of the hypothesis of emotional modulation mediated by proprioception, which constitutes another of the great antecedents of the definition of this theory. From the same decade The works carried out by Paul Ekman and Harrieh Oster are also recognized about emotions and facial expressions.
Between the decades of the 80’s and 90’s many other researchers followed, who carried out numerous experiments to check whether muscle movements can indeed activate certain affective experiences. We will develop below some of the most recent ones, as well as the theoretical updates that have derived from them.
The held pen paradigm
In 1988, Fritz Strack, Leonard L. Martin, and Sabine Stepper conducted a study where they asked participants to watch a series of funny cartoons. Meanwhile, a portion of them were asked to hold a pen with their lips. The others were asked the same, but with their teeth.
The previous request had a reason: the facial posture that is made when holding a pen between your teeth contracts the zygomaticus major muscle, which we use to smile, which favors the smiling facial expression. On the contrary, facial movement performed with the pen between the lips contracts the orbicularis muscle, which inhibits the muscle activity necessary to smile.
In this way, the researchers measured the facial activity associated with smiling, and wanted to see if the subjective experience of joy was related to said activity. The result was that the people who held the pen with their teeth reported that cartoons were funnier than those people who held the pen with their lips.
The conclusion was that facial expressions associated with some emotion can effectively transform the subjective experience of said emotion; even when people are not fully aware of the facial gestures they are performing.
Is facial feedback inhibited when we are observed?
In 2016, almost three decades after Strack, Martin and Stepper’s experiment, the psychologist and mathematician Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, together with his collaborators, replicated the held pen experiment.
To everyone’s surprise, they did not find enough evidence to support the effect of facial feedback. In response, Fritz Strack explained that Wagenmakers’ experiment had been performed with a variable that was not present in the original study, which had surely affected and determined the new results.
This variable was a video camera that recorded the activity of each of the participants. According to Strack, the experience of feeling observed caused by the video camera would have significantly modified the effect of facial feedback.
The effect of external observation on affective experience
Given the previous controversy, Tom Noah, Yaacov Schul and Ruth Mayo (2018) replicated the study again, first using a camera and then omitting its use. As part of their conclusions, they propose that, far from being exclusive, the studies by Strack and Wagenmakers are consistent with theories that explain how feeling observed affects internal signals related to the most basic activity; in this case with facial feedback.
In their research, they verified that the effect of facial feedback is noticeably present when there is no electronic device recording (therefore, participants are not concerned about monitoring their activity).
On the contrary, the effect decreases when participants know that they are being monitored by the video camera. The inhibition of the effect is explained as follows: the experience of feeling observed generates the need to conform to external expectations for which internal information is not available or prepared.
Thus, Noah, Schul, and Mayo (2018) concluded that the presence of the camera led participants to adopt the stance of a third perspective on the situation, and consequently, they generated less attunement to facial feedback from their own muscles.
