Robert Kleck

Dartmouth College · Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences

As our society ages, questions concerning the relations between generations gain importance. The quality of human relations depends on the quality of emotion communication, which is a significant part of our daily interactions. Emotion expressions serve not only to communicate how the expresser feels, but also to communicate intentions (whether to a...

This volume set out to compile the state of the art of research on the perception of emotions in the aging face and body. Notably, older adults are the fastest growing age group in the world (United Nations, 2020). Yet, whereas a large body of research has focused on the ability of the elderly to perceive and use emotional information, very few stu...

Individuals use naïve emotion theories, including stereotypical information on the emotional disposition of an interaction partner, to form social impressions. In view of an aging population in Western societies, beliefs on emotion and age become more and more relevant. Across 10 studies, we thus present findings on how individuals associate specif...

Considerable research has shown effects of facial appearance on trait impressions and group stereotypes. We extended those findings in two studies that investigated the contribution of resemblance to emotion expressions and attractiveness to younger adults (YA) and older adults (OA) age and gender stereotypes on the dimensions of warmth and compete...

It might seem a reasonable assumption that when we are not actively using our faces to express ourselves (i.e., when we display nonexpressive, or neutral faces), those around us will not be able to read our emotions. Herein, using a variety of expression-related ratings, we examined whether age-related changes in the face can accurately reveal one’...

The correct interpretation of emotional expressions is crucial for social life. However, emotions in old relative to young faces are recognized less well. One reason for this may be decreased signal clarity of older faces due to morphological changes, such as wrinkles and folds, obscuring facial displays of emotions. Across three experiments, the p...

The human face conveys a myriad of social meanings within an overlapping array of features. Herein, we examine such features within the context of gender-emotion stereotypes. First we detail the pervasive set of gender-emotion expectations known to exist. We then review new research revealing that gender cues and emotion expression often share phys...

Replacement distance errors made while reconstructing a stimulus display were examined as a function of the affective relationship existing between the stimuli As expected photographs of persons highly liked were placed closer to a photo of self than were photographs of persons not highly liked Stimulus pairs of highly liked persons were also place...

There is a common belief that wrinkles in the aging face reflect frequently experienced emotions and hence resemble these affective displays. This implies that the wrinkles and folds in elderly faces interfere with the perception of other emotions currently experienced by the elderly as well as with the inferences perceivers draw from these express...

The current work examined contributions of emotion-resembling facial cues to impression formation. There exist common facial cues that make people look emotional, male or female, and from which we derive personality inferences. We first conducted a Pilot Study to assess these effects. We found that neutral female versus neutral male faces were rate...

We examined whether amygdala responses to rapidly presented fear expressions are preferentially tuned to averted vs direct gaze fear and conversely whether responses to more sustained presentations are preferentially tuned to direct vs averted gaze fear. We conducted three functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies to test these predictio...

One of the most pervasive gender stereotypes in Western culture concerns expectations regarding men's and women's emotionality. Whereas men are expected to be anger prone, women are expected to smile more. At the same time, men are generally perceived as more facially dominant and facially dominant individuals are expected to show more anger. That...

Faces are not simply blank canvases upon which facial expressions write their emotional messages. In fact, facial appearance and facial movement are both important social signalling systems in their own right. We here provide multiple lines of evidence for the notion that the social signals derived from facial appearance on the one hand and facial...

Certain features of facial appearance perceptually resemble expressive cues related to facial displays of emotion. We hypothesized that because expressive markers of anger (such as lowered eyebrows) overlap with perceptual markers of male sex, perceivers would identify androgynous angry faces as more likely to be a man than a woman (Study 1) and wo...

Facial expressions of happiness and anger have been suggested to share morphological features with certain personality markers in the face. A study was conducted to assess the hypothesis that angry and dominant faces on one hand and happy, fearful, and affiliative faces on the other hand would be categorized together based on the features they shar...

Certain features of facial appearance perceptually resemble expressive cues related to facial displays of emotion. We hypothesized that because expressive markers of anger (such as lowered eyebrows) overlap with perceptual markers of male sex, perceivers would identify androgynous angry faces as more likely to be a man than a woman (Study 1) and wo...

Have facial expressions evolved randomly or do their different shapes support some adaptive purpose? New work offers evidence of a selection pressure that may have shaped fearful and disgusted expressions.

In the preceding sections we have presented research relevant to the decoding of emotional facial expressions that focuses on information other than the actual facial expression. Much is known about the specific features that make a face appear sad, angry, fearful, happy, etc. and this information has been used in recent years to implement computer...

The role of horizontal head tilt for the perceptions of emotional facial expressions was examined. For this, a total of 387 participants rated facial expressions of anger, fear, sadness, and happiness, as well as neutral expressions shown by two men and two women in either a direct or an averted face angle. Decoding accuracy, attributions of domina...

Emotional facial expressions have affective significance. Smiles, for example, are perceived as positive and responded to with increased happiness, whereas angry expressions are perceived as negative and threatening. Yet, these perceptions are modulated in part by facial morphological cues related to the sex of the expresser. The present research a...

The study of emotional expressions has a long tradition in psychology. Although research in this domain has extensively studied the social context factors that influence the expresser's facial display, the perceiver was considered passive. This 2007 book focuses on more recent developments that show that the perceiver is also subject to the same so...

The contention that basic behavioral intentions are forecasted by emotional expressions has received surprisingly little empirical support. We introduce a behavioral task that gauges the speed with which movement of angry and fearful faces (toward or away from an expressor's gaze) are accurately detected. In two studies we found that perceivers wer...

Three experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that the social stereotype that anger displays are more appropriate for men and smiling is requisite for women is based on the perception of men and women as more or less dominant or affiliative. The first study tested the mediation model that men are rated as more dominant and women as more a...

Research has largely neglected the effects of gaze direction cues on the perception of facial expressions of emotion. It was hypothesized that when gaze direction matches the underlying behavioral intent (approach-avoidance) communicated by an emotional expression, the perception of that emotion would be enhanced (i.e., shared signal hypothesis). S...

The facial expressions of fear and anger are universal social signals in humans. Both expressions have been frequently presumed to signify threat to perceivers and therefore are often used in studies investigating responses to threatening stimuli. Here the authors show that the anger expression facilitates avoidance-related behavior in participants...

The origins of the appearances of anger and fear facial expressions are not well understood. The authors tested the hypothesis that such origins might lie in the expressions' resemblance to, respectively, mature and babyish faces in three studies. In Study 1, faces expressing anger and fear were judged to physically resemble mature and babyish face...

Western gender stereotypes describe women as affiliative and more likely to show happiness and men as dominant and more likely to show anger. The authors assessed the hypothesis that the gender-stereotypic effects on perceptions of anger and happiness are partially mediated by facial appearance markers of dominance and affiliation by equating men's...

There is good reason to believe that gaze direction and facial displays of emotion share an information value as signals of approach or avoidance. The combination of these cues in the analysis of social communication, however, has been a virtually neglected area of inquiry. Two studies were conducted to test the prediction that direct gaze would fa...

The current research examines how members of stigmatized groups remediate hiring biases by adopting the strategy of directly acknowledging their stigmatizing condition within the interview context. In the first study, 123 participants responded to a videotaped interview involving an obese or physically disabled job applicant who either did or did n...

Three studies were conducted to assess prevalent stereotypes regarding men's and women's emotional expressivity as well as self-perceptions of their emotional behaviour as indicated by emotion profiles. Studies 1-3 used samples of 544, 360, and 171 college students, respectively. In Study 1, the authors asked how men and women in general would reac...

Facial expressions of emotions convey not only information about emotional states but also about interpersonal intentions. The present study investigated whether factors known to influence the decoding of emotional expressions—the gender and ethnicity of the stimulus person as well as the intensity of the expression—would also influence attribution...

Facial expressions convey a vast amount of information, but only recently have investigators begun to explore the precise details of what expressions are telling us about internal states, social behavior, and psychopathology. The Facial Action Coding System (FACS), which is a tool for comprehensively measuring facial expressions, plays a central ro...

The influence of the physical intensity of emotional facial expressions on perceived intensity and emotion category decoding accuracy was assessed for expressions of anger, disgust, sadness, and happiness. The facial expressions of two men and two women posing each of the four emotions were used as stimuli. Six different levels of intensity of expr...

Participants' self-reports of the intensity of their facial expressive responses to an amusing stimulus were compared with judges' ratings in 2 studies. In Experiment 1, 24 men and 24 women who were alone and assigned to either a spontaneous or facial attention condition perceived their facial behavior to be significantly more expressive than judge...

Two studies were conducted using video records of real faces and three-dimensional schematic faces to investigate the perceptual distortions introduced by viewing faces at a vertical angle and their influence on the attribution of emotional expressions and attitudes. The results indicate that faces seen from below were perceived as morepositive and...

Dynamic facial expressions, either posed or elicited by afectively evocative materials, were objectively scored to determine the movement cues and temporal parameters associated with the two types of expression. Subjects viewed these expressive episodes and rated each of them on a number of scales intended to assess perceived spontaneousness and de...

In Study 1, 30 male and 30 female undergraduates viewed an affect-neutral stimulus and a stress-inducing stimulus. Ss then talked about either their emotional reactions to the stressful stimulus (emotion condition), the sequence of events within it (fact condition), or the sequence of events within the neutral stimulus (distraction condition). Emot...

Twenty-seven female undergraduates completed three tasks: (1) feel four emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, peacefulness); (2) express these emotions, without trying to feel them; and (3) feel and express clearly these four emotions. During each trial subjects pressed a button to indicate when they had reached the required state, and the latency f...

Presents the obituary of the social psychologist John T. Lanzetta (1926–1989). Distinct stages in Lanzetta's research career are delineated; these stages dealt with groundwork for the study of group performance, the acquisition of imitative responses, and affect and emotional expressivity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved...

Presents the obituary of the social psychologist John T. Lanzetta (1926?1989). Distinct stages in Lanzetta's research career are delineated; these stages dealt with groundwork for the study of group performance, the acquisition of imitative responses, and affect and emotional expressivity.

Young adults talked to an experimenter about their emotional reactions to video episodes intended to evoke either negative or positive affect. Facial behavior was simultaneously videotaped from three perspectives (full-face, a 90 right profile, and a 90 left profile) without their awareness. Judges viewed a subset of dynamic expressions in one of t...

Recent research suggests the potential importance of dynamic aspects (e.g. speed of onset and offset and degree of irregularity) of facial movement for the encoding of spontaneous versus deliberate emotional facial expressions. The present studies were conducted to investigate whether emotion elicited and deliberate facial expressions of happiness...

An apparatus is described that allows for the nonobtrusive recording, from a direct camera perspective, of a subject watching a video or computer display. The device follows the basic principles of a periscope and is useful in a variety of experimental paradigms, particularly those involving the assessment of nonverbal aspects of behavior.

Spontaneous facial expressions were elicited from 64 young adults who watched video segments intended to evoke either positive or negative affect. Subjects viewed the stimuli under conditions where they were alone and thought they were not under visual surveillance. Expressive responses to the emotionally evocative materials were video-taped simult...

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 (...

Individuals viewed facial images of themselves that were normal or that had been manipulated to give the appearance of a facial scar. These were shown in a stimulus sequence that included images of both facially normal and facially disfigured others. Participants were more autonomically aroused (skin resistance) when viewing facially disfigured tha...

Physically handicapped individuals have been observed to differ greatly in their tendency to perceive the behavior of nonhandicapped others as causally linked to then own physically deviant status. The present study investigated the likelihood that spinally injured persons, amputees, and nonhandicapped individuals would make disability-linked attri...

Observers watched a videotape of a stimulus person under one of four instructional sets. It was the subject's presumption that the target person thought her interactant was either: (a) physically normal; (b) taking medication for an allergy; (c) taking medication for epilepsy; or (d)facially scarred. Observers performed a perceptual segmentation ta...

Examined the sociometric status of children with obvious physical handicaps in an integrated (approximately 70% Black, 20% Puerto Rican, and 10% White) summer camp setting containing 61 girls (aged 7.5–14 yrs) and 60 boys (aged 7.75–14 yrs). 23% of Ss had obvious physical handicaps (e.g., spinal injuries, limb deformities), and 33% had some form of...

Observers viewed a videotape in which an able-bodied person was shown giving positive, neutral, negative, or evaluatively mixed performance feedback to either a handicapped or a nonhandicapped individual. Subjects were less likely to perceive positive feedback provided to handicapped performers as indicative of task accomplishment than when the sam...

Two experiments examined alternative explanations for the Scheier and Carver(1977) results linking self-focused attention to increased responsivity to emotional stimuli. In both studies autonomic, expressive, and self-report measures of emotional arousal failed to confirm the earlier findings. An individual difference measure reported by others to...

12 male and 12 female counselors' estimates of the sociometric status of 60 boys and 61 girls were compared to their peer-rated acceptance within small, same-sex living groups at a 3-wk. camp. Adults' estimates and child-derived ranks for liking were strongly correlated for both physically handicapped and nonhandicapped children of both sexes. Phys...

24 female undergraduates were led to believe that they were perceived as physically deviant in the eyes of an interactant when in fact they were not. Following a brief discussion, they commented on those aspects of the interactant's behavior that appeared to be linked to the deviance. Ss who thought that they possessed negatively valued physical ch...

We demonstrated a general strategy for detecting motives that people wish to conceal. The strategy consists of having people choose between two alternatives, one of which happens to satisfy the motive. By counterbalancing which one does so, it is possible to distill the motive by examining the pattern of choices that people make. The motive used in...

Conducted 2 experiments with a total of 64 undergraduates to demonstrate a general strategy for detecting motives that people wish to conceal. The strategy involves having people choose between 2 alternatives, one of which happens to satisfy the motive. By counterbalancing which one does so, it is possible to distill the motive by examining the pat...

A within-subjects experiment was performed to investigate the effect of various levels of pain expression on autonomic and tolerance responses to electrical shocks which were terminated by the subjects at their tolerance level. Ten male undergraduates posed three levels of pain expression while being shocked by a constant current source that was tu...

Two experiments explored the effects of observation by another on responses to painful stimuli. It was anticipated that the intensity of pain-related non-verbal expressivity decreases under observation, while indices of arousal (skin conductance and self-report) increase. In Experiment 1, subjects' expressive responses to shock were attenuated when...

Two experiments explored the effects of observation by another on responses to painful stimuli. It was anticipated that the intensity of pain-related nonverbal expressivity decreases under observation, while indices of arousal (skin conductance and self-report) increase. In Exp I, 20 male undergraduates' expressive responses to shock were attenuate...

Three studies are reported that examine the relationship between the nonverbal display of emotional affect and indices of the emotional state. Subjects were asked either to conceal or to exaggerate the facial display associated with the anticipation and reception of painful shocks that varied in intensity. Both self-reports of shock painfulness and...

Studied the effects of physical appearance (attractive-unattractive) and perceived attitude similarity (high-low) on self-report and nonverbal measures of interpersonal attraction. The physical attractiveness of female confederates, but not their perceived degree of similarity to the 48 male undergraduate Ss, resulted in a number of significant eff...

2 studies are reported which demonstrate a positive relationship between the sociometric status of 9-14-year-old boys after 2 weeks of intense social interaction and social acceptance judged from photographs by an independent group of age peers. Study 2 provides data suggesting that high sociometric status measured subsequent to interaction and als...

12 male undergraduates viewed a sequence of equally spaced and randomly ordered red and green lights, in which the red light signaled the advent of shock. Continuous skin-resistance measures were taken. Ss nonverbal responses to the red and green stimuli were video taped without their knowledge and were later viewed by themselves and 5 of the other...

Facial expressions of emotions convey not only information about emotional states but also about interpersonal intentions. The present study investigated whether factors known to influence the decoding of emotional expressions--the gender and ethnicity of the stimulus person as well as the intensity of the expression--would also influence attributi...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Dept. of Psychology, Stanford University. Bibliography: l. [59]-62.

The present study is part of a research project focusing on the behavioral output of persons interacting with physically stigmatized individuals. It sought to extend our prior analyses which were limited to short term, get acquainted interactions involving males, to longer term, task oriented encounters involving females. As in previous studies a l...

An experiment is reported which was designed to test, with posed stimulus materials, the degree of congruence between certain indicative functions of eye contact and the communicative value of this nonverbal cue. The hypothesized congruence in regard to the variables of attraction and interpersonal tension was strongly confirmed. The expectation th...

Self-revelation patterns of epileptics who had their seizures under drug control were examined with questionnaire and interview procedures. Parents were found to be the clearly preferred targets for self-disclosure generally and for health-related information in particular. As expected, all respondents chose not to reveal their stigmatized conditio...

2 studies examined the use of personal space by persons in interactions involving stigmatized individuals. In Exp. I, responses on a figure-placement task and on an attitude questionnaire are compared. In Exp. II, interactions involving a person believed to have epilepsy are examined in regard to both initial interaction distance and eye contact. A...

STUDIED THE INTERACTION BETWEEN PHYSICALLY STIGMATIZED AND NORMAL SS IN REGARD TO NONVERBAL DIMENSIONS OF INTERACTION TO TEST HYPOTHESES RELATED TO IMPRESSION FORMATION. LEFT LEG AMPUTATION WAS SIMULATED WITH A SPECIALLY DESIGNED WHEELCHAIR. THE LEVEL OF EYE CONTACT WAS SIMILAR FOR DISABLED-NORMAL AND NORMAL-NORMAL INTERACTION. SS, INTERACTING WITH...

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN OPEN- AND CLOSED-MINDEDNESS, AS MEASURED BY THE DOGMATISM SCALE, AND RESPONSES TO INFORMATION CONSISTENT AND INCONSISTENT WITH OWN OPINION WAS EXAMINED. AS EXPECTED, DOGMATIC SS DID SHOW LESS RECALL OF INCONSISTENT INFORMATION AND A GREATER TENDENCY TO EVALUATE CONSISTENT INFORMATION MORE POSITIVELY THAN DID OPEN SS. THE EX...

Goffman (1963) has argued that interactions between physically disabled and physically normal persons will be anxious and unanchored for both participants. This is supported by Richardson, et a1. (1961) who reported that the nonhandicapped person often does experience uncomfortableness and uncertainty when interacting with a physically stigmatized...

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