No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
The spontaneous expression of pride and shame: Evidence for biologically innate nonverbal displays
Abstract
The present research examined whether the recognizable nonverbal expressions associated with pride and shame may be biologically innate behavioral responses to success and failure. Specifically, we tested whether sighted, blind, and congenitally blind individuals across cultures spontaneously display pride and shame behaviors in response to the same success and failure situations--victory and defeat at the Olympic or Paralympic Games. Results showed that sighted, blind, and congenitally blind individuals from >30 nations displayed the behaviors associated with the prototypical pride expression in response to success. Sighted, blind, and congenitally blind individuals from most cultures also displayed behaviors associated with shame in response to failure. However, culture moderated the shame response among sighted athletes: it was less pronounced among individuals from highly individualistic, self-expression-valuing cultures, primarily in North America and West Eurasia. Given that congenitally blind individuals across cultures showed the shame response to failure, findings overall are consistent with the suggestion that the behavioral expressions associated with both shame and pride are likely to be innate, but the shame display may be intentionally inhibited by some sighted individuals in accordance with cultural norms.
... A growing body of research suggests that nonverbal behavior (NVB) and sports performance are related (for an overview, see Furley & Schweizer, 2020). In order to structure this body of research, Furley and Schweizer (2020) have suggested categorizing the studies on the relationship between NVB and sports performance depending on whether they conceptualize NVB either as a consequence (e.g., Furley & Schweizer, 2014Hwang & Matsumoto, 2014;Moesch, Kenttä, Bäckström, & Mattsson, 2015;Moesch, Kenttä, Bäckströ;m, & Mattsson, 2016;Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008) or as a predictor of sports performance (e.g., Furley & Memmert, 2020;Kraus, Huang, & Keltner, 2010;Moesch, Kenttä, Bäckström, & Mattsson, 2016;Moll, Jordet, & Pepping, 2010). However, whereas evidence for a relationship between NVB and performance is accumulating, evidence for the direction of the relationship is still mostly lacking. ...
... Theoretically, changes in performance as a predictor of changes in NVB are often explained from an evolutionary perspective (Furley & Schweizer, 2014Hwang & Matsumoto, 2014;Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008): Social animals, like humans, tend to display submissive or dominant nonverbal signals following losing or winning in antagonistic encounters. Dominant NVB is defined as being expansive (e.g., erect posture, wide shoulders, arms akimbo). ...
... For example, Furley & Schweizer (2014 provide data suggesting that humans can distinguish between athletes who are trailing and leading in an ongoing competition based on thin slices of athletes' NVB (i.e., short video clips and pictures), even when clear nonverbal indicators of success and failure are omitted from the presented stimulus material. In a similar vein, data provided by Matsumoto and colleagues suggest that the NVBs of athletes who won or lost entire matches differ, and that these NVBs may have a genetic basis (Hwang & Matsumoto, 2014;Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008). One major limitation of the above-mentioned studies is that although the authors commonly interpret their data as indicative of individual variation (i.e., athletes display different NVB when they are winning than when they are losing), data are often cross-sectional (i.e., winning athletes display different NVB than losing athletes). ...
Objectives
The aim of the present research is to investigate the relationship between nonverbal behavior (NVB) and sports performance in a longitudinal design using cross-lagged panel models (CLPMs).
Method
In our study NVB and performance were measured at eight time points (n1) in 48 basketball matches (n2), resulting in N = 384 data points. Cross-lagged paths between NVB and performance were analyzed in multilevel models, with NVB at time point t-1 predicting performance at time point t and performance at time point t-1 predicting NVB at time point t. Performance was measured as the score difference between one team to the opposing team within a time point. NVB was rated on a scale from dominance to submissiveness by two blinded raters. Dependence of performance measures between time points was eliminated by two different approaches, resulting in two different measurements of performance.
Results
Results indicate an effect of NVB at time point t-1 on performance at time point t for one of the methods of performance. Contrary to our hypothesis and evidence from previous findings, there was no effect of performance at time point t-1 on NVB at time point t for neither method of measuring performance.
Conclusions
This study supports a positive relationship between NVB and sports performance, more so in the direction of NVB predicting performance.
... The potential use of personal force makes people feel guilt or shame before making a decision and, therefore, rating actions that use personal force as morally less acceptable. There is a convincing argument that these social emotions are universal [32][33][34] , despite some cultural variation in their intensity and the social contexts in which they are experienced [32][33][34] . It has been argued that shame and guilt are more important in interdependent, collectivistic cultures (as their function is argued to be linked to social control). ...
... The potential use of personal force makes people feel guilt or shame before making a decision and, therefore, rating actions that use personal force as morally less acceptable. There is a convincing argument that these social emotions are universal [32][33][34] , despite some cultural variation in their intensity and the social contexts in which they are experienced [32][33][34] . It has been argued that shame and guilt are more important in interdependent, collectivistic cultures (as their function is argued to be linked to social control). ...
... It has been argued that shame and guilt are more important in interdependent, collectivistic cultures (as their function is argued to be linked to social control). People living in East Asian countries have reported experiencing these emotions more frequently and more intensely [32][33][34] . Other findings suggest that it is anxiety that mediates the effect of intention and personal force 28 , but anxiety (social anxiety in particular) has also been positively associated with collectivism 35 , pointing to the same direction. ...
The study of moral judgements often centres on moral dilemmas in which options consistent with deontological perspectives (that is, emphasizing rules, individual rights and duties) are in conflict with options consistent with utilitarian judgements (that is, following the greater good based on consequences). Greene et al. (2009) showed that psychological and situational factors (for example, the intent of the agent or the presence of physical contact between the agent and the victim) can play an important role in moral dilemma judgements (for example, the trolley problem). Our knowledge is limited concerning both the universality of these effects outside the United States and the impact of culture on the situational and psychological factors affecting moral judgements. Thus, we empirically tested the universality of the effects of intent and personal force on moral dilemma judgements by replicating the experiments of Greene et al. in 45 countries from all inhabited continents. We found that personal force and its interaction with intention exert influence on moral judgements in the US and Western cultural clusters, replicating and expanding the original findings. Moreover, the personal force effect was present in all cultural clusters, suggesting it is culturally universal. The evidence for the cultural universality of the interaction effect was inconclusive in the Eastern and Southern cultural clusters (depending on exclusion criteria). We found no strong association between collectivism/individualism and moral dilemma judgements.
... Triumph is the feeling elicited upon victory (Matsumoto & Hwang, 2012). Empirical work has suggested that in the immediate aftermath of winning, specific signals emerge: people adopt a straightened body posture with the chest protruding, and make guttural sounds signalling their victory (Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008). There is also evidence from two divergent cultural samples examining athletes immediately post victory, which found that winners tended to show open mouthed smiles and upward head tilting (Hwang & Matsumoto, 2014). ...
... We predicted that people would think triumph (Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008) is most frequently expressed using the face, body movement, and voice, when contrasted against the other modalities. ...
... Participants were first shown a list of the four positive emotions and provided with definitions for each emotion (shown in Table 2), derived from commonly used definitions in the literature (e.g., Algoe et al., 2013;Cova & Deonna, 2014;Silvia, 2008;Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008). The participants were then asked to think about how members of their nation in general express each positive emotion, and were asked to select options denoting various modalities of expression: (1) with the voice, (2) on the face, (3) using body movement, (4) with words, (5) via touch, (6) in other ways. ...
While much is known about how negative emotions are expressed in different modalities, our understanding of the nonverbal expressions of positive emotions remains limited. In the present research, we draw upon disparate lines of theoretical and empirical work on positive emotions, and systematically examine which channels are thought to be used for expressing four positive emotions: feeling moved, gratitude, interest, and triumph. Employing the intersubjective approach, an established method in cross-cultural psychology, we first explored how the four positive emotions were reported to be expressed in two North American community samples (Studies 1a and 1b: n = 1466). We next confirmed the cross-cultural generalizability of our findings by surveying respondents from ten countries that diverged on cultural values (Study 2: n = 1826). Feeling moved was thought to be signaled with facial expressions, gratitude with the use of words, interest with words, face and voice, and triumph with body posture, vocal cues, facial expressions, and words. These findings provide cross-culturally consistent findings of differential expressions across positive emotions. Notably, positive emotions were thought to be expressed via modalities that go beyond the face.
... To which degree are these gestures of pride and their opposite (shame) universal? Tracy and Matsumoto (2008) compared postural displays of pride and shame in sighted, blind, and congenitally blind athletes from over thirty countries while competing in Olympic and Paralympic Games. Individuals from all cultures displayed the same bodily components typical of pride (victory) described in the initial example (e.g., raising arms and open chest) in reaction to winning, suggesting that the abstract concept of victory-success is embodied in innate behavioral responses. ...
... Interestingly, also, Tracy and Matsumoto (2008) found the strongest expression of shame among blind athletes from all cultures, suggesting that those who had never seen others suppressing victory and defeat emotions are less likely to be affected by cultural codes concerning expression. Although this study did not investigate cognitive consequences, there are plausible reasons for positing them. ...
... For instance, related research has shown that holding prototypical guilt poses (head tilted downwards, slumped shoulders, constricted chest) increases personal and collective guilt and intentions to repair misdoings (Rotella & Richeson, 2013). Thus, it is likely that the cultural differences observed by Tracy and Matsumoto (2008) would have consequences for the thoughts and feelings linked to shame. ...
According to current embodied cognition models, sensorimotor experiences play a critical role in cognition, including social cognition. Since our bodies are embedded in a sociocultural context, it is likely that the link between bodily states and cognition is shaped and constrained by culture. Here we argue that culture affects embodied cognition through three distinct means: (1) the physical environment and the affordances it offers, (2) cultural values and conventions that encourage certain sensorimotor experiences while discouraging others (such as body postures of submission or pride, smiling, hand-washing, and touching), and (3) cultural differences related to language, including metaphors and script direction. The present review is not meant to be exhaustive, but it offers selective insights into the paths through which diverse cultural environments shape embodied cognition. The chapter also discusses possible future venues for research on cultural embodied cognition.
... Sport performances are characterised by emotions (Lazarus, 2000), particularly when winning or losing (Aviezer et al., 2012;Koehn & Morris, 2012;Matsumoto & Hwang, 2012;Matsumoto & Willingham, 2006;McCaul et al., 1992;Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008;Whittaker-Bleuler, 1982). Studies that investigated nonverbal expressions during sports reported a particular behaviour during (positive) emotions, i.e. raising arms to express feelings of pride when winning (Matsumoto & Hwang, 2012;Matsumoto & Willingham, 2006;Moesch et al., 2015;Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008). ...
... Sport performances are characterised by emotions (Lazarus, 2000), particularly when winning or losing (Aviezer et al., 2012;Koehn & Morris, 2012;Matsumoto & Hwang, 2012;Matsumoto & Willingham, 2006;McCaul et al., 1992;Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008;Whittaker-Bleuler, 1982). Studies that investigated nonverbal expressions during sports reported a particular behaviour during (positive) emotions, i.e. raising arms to express feelings of pride when winning (Matsumoto & Hwang, 2012;Matsumoto & Willingham, 2006;Moesch et al., 2015;Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008). Moesch et al. (2015) communicated that if a team is leading, the higher the athlete's overall number of nonverbal behaviour. ...
... Irregular, rhythmic and phasic movements (with medium intensity) showed to serve to self-regulate stress (Densing et al., 2018). Because winning athletes were characterised by hand movements such as "arms away from the body", and "arms raised above the shoulders formed as fists" (Matsumoto & Hwang, 2012;Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008) we hypothesised that athletes would increase their body-distant hand movements when winning but change to bodyfocused hand movements when experiencing negative emotions in sports, i.e. when losing. ...
Emotional body-distant gestures are a prominent feature of winning athletes. Because negative emotions have been associated to increased self-touch behaviour, we investigated the hypothesis that athletes change from a more body-distant nonverbal hand movement behaviour when winning to a body-focused behaviour when losing. Nonverbal hand movements of professional right-handed tennis athletes were video-taped during competition and analyzed by certified raters using the NEUROpsychological GESture(NEUROGES)System. The results showed that losing athletes increase their irregular, on body, and phasic on body hand movements, particularly with the left hand. Emotion / attitude rise gestures with the right hand characterised winning athletes. The data suggest that the nonverbal hand movements of athletes serve different neuropsychological functions. Winners nonverbally express their positive feelings by body-distant gestures but change towards their own body to regulate stress when losing.
... The appraisal features that inspired the search queries were compiled from theories of the appraisal and construction of emotion (11,34,(61)(62)(63)(64). The specific emotions were derived from taxonomies of prominent theorists (see (65) for review), along with more focused studies of positive emotions such as amusement, awe, love, desire, elation, and sympathy (66,67); subtle emotions that have been found to occur in daily interactions, such as confusion, concentration, doubt, and interest (68,69); and other recently studied states such as distress, disappointment, and shame (24,70). See Cowen & Keltner (12) for further details of how the expressions were collected, including search queries. ...
... mean facial expressions rated = 82.4) judged each image in terms of 28 specific emotions derived from an extensive review of past studies of emotional expression (24,(65)(66)(67)(68)(69)(70). The emotions included: AMUSEMENT, ANGER, AWE, A second group of participants (N = 1116, 584 female, mean age = 34.3, ...
Central to science and technology are questions about how to measure facial expression. The current gold standard is the facial action coding system (FACS), which is often assumed to account for all facial muscle movements relevant to perceived emotion. However, the mapping from FACS codes to perceived emotion is not well understood. Six prototypical configurations of facial action units (AU) are sometimes assumed to account for perceived emotion, but this hypothesis remains largely untested. Here, using statistical modeling, we examine how FACS codes actually correspond to perceived emotions in a wide range of naturalistic expressions. Each of 1456 facial expressions was independently FACS coded by two experts (r = .84, κ = .84). Naive observers reported the emotions they perceived in each expression in many different ways, including emotions (N = 666); valence, arousal and appraisal dimensions (N =1116); authenticity (N = 121), and free response (N = 193). We find that facial expressions are much richer in meaning than typically assumed: At least 20 patterns of facial muscle movements captured by FACS have distinct perceived emotional meanings. Surprisingly, however, FACS codes do not offer a complete description of real-world facial expressions, capturing no more than half of the reliable variance in perceived emotion. Our findings suggest that the perceived emotional meanings of facial expressions are most accurately and efficiently represented using a wide range of carefully selected emotion concepts, such as the Cowen & Keltner (2019) taxonomy of 28 emotions. Further work is needed to characterize the anatomical bases of these facial expressions.
... In more direct evidence for an association between pride-motivated effort and resultant social rank, Williams and DeSteno (2009) found that individuals manipulated to feel pride prior to a group problem-solving task were subsequently perceived by fellow group members as more dominant, suggesting that pride experiences promote problem-solving and interpersonal behaviors that increase social standing. Other studies have shown that the cross-culturally recognized and displayed nonverbal expression of pride (Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008;Tracy & Robins, 2008) leads to automatic perceptions of high rank in observers (Brosi et al., 2016;Shariff & Tracy, 2009;Shariff & Tracy, 2011;Shariff et al., 2012), including observers from a non-Western, highly isolated, small-scale traditional society . These findings suggest that humans may possess an evolved tendency to confer social rank upon prideful individuals . ...
... Thus, the tendency to feel pride after success may be an evolved adaptation that motivates individuals to strive for greater social status and reinforces their efforts when successful, even though they may not consciously recognize a desire for pride as a motivation for task performance or social rank attainment (Sznycer et al., 2017;Tracy et al., 2020). More specifically, pride experiences occur in response to meaningful long-term achievements, such as competitive runners training for a marathon (Weidman et al., 2016) and athletes winning an Olympic judo match (Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008). Pride is also experienced and expressed in response to more minor achievements, such as preschool children winning a fight (Strayer & Strayer, 1976), high-school and college students performing well on an exam or task (Weidman et al., 2016;Weisfeld & Beresford, 1982;Williams & DeSteno, 2008, 2009, and children as young as 3 years old successfully completing a challenging task (Belsky et al., 1997;Lewis et al., 1992;Stipek et al., 1992). ...
Prior research has found an association between pride experiences and social rank outcomes. However, the causal direction of this relationship remains unclear. The current research used a longitudinal design ( N = 1,653) to investigate whether pride experiences are likely to be a cause, consequence, or both, of social rank outcomes, by tracking changes in individuals’ pride and social rank over time. Prior research also has uncovered distinct correlational relationships between the two facets of pride, authentic and hubristic, and two forms of social rank, prestige and dominance, respectively. We therefore separately examined longitudinal relationships between each pride facet and each form of social rank. Results reveal distinct bidirectional relationships between authentic pride and prestige and hubristic pride and dominance, suggesting that specific kinds of pride experiences and specific forms of social rank are both an antecedent and a consequence of one another.
... However, another similar study reached some different conclusions. Tracy and Matsumoto (2008) also analysed the expressions and movements of blind athletes from 37 countries at the Athens Paralympic Games. Their results showed that, compared with athletes with congenital blindness, athletes with adventitious blindness, who had some visual experience, were more regulated by social and cultural norms, and their emotional expressions might differ as a result. ...
This study examined the role of early visual experience and age in the recognition of emotional prosody among students with visual impairments in China. A total of 75 primary and junior high school students participated in the study. The ability of participants to recognize the prosody of four basic emotions (sadness, anger, happiness, and neutrality) was explored. The findings were as follows. (1) Early visual experience had a significant effect on the recognition of emotional prosody. The accuracy rate of students with congenital blindness was lower than that of students with adventitious blindness, and the performance of students with congenital blindness was lower than that of sighted students. The students with congenital blindness exhibited the slowest recognition speeds. (2) Age had a significant effect on the emotional prosody recognition accuracy of the sighted students, but it had no effect on the students with blindness.
... Indeed, emotions as social information (EASI) theory (Van Kleef, 2008, one of the key theories in the emotion research area, indicates that individuals pay close attention to others' emotional displays and then settle their own emotions in response to the observed emotional cues. We focus on pride because it is the prototypical emotion that individuals who occupy a superior position (e.g., higher LMX) display (Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008), and is often "intertwined with envy in a socialfunctional relationship" (Lange & Crusius, 2015, p. 454). Therefore, we integrate social comparison theory and EASI theory to propose that perceived compared coworkers' pride plays a vital role in qualifying the effects of LMXSC on benign and malicious envy. ...
Although the extant literature has demonstrated the benefits of building a higher leader-member exchange (LMX) relationship with a leader, it has overlooked the efforts by lower LMX employees to leverage the difference from higher LMX coworkers. Integrating social comparison theory and EASI theory, we contend that lower LMX social comparison (LMXSC) is associated with positive (self-improving) and negative (undermining) behavior via different emotional mechanisms, and that the focal employee’s perceptions of the comparison coworker’s pride play a critical role in qualifying the effects of lower LMXSC. The results from a time-lagged field study and an online experiment reveal that lower LMXSC is associated with both benign and malicious envy, which in turn respectively relate to the focal employee learning and socially undermining the superior coworker. The negative indirect effect of LMXSC on learning behaviors via benign envy is stronger when the coworker compared is perceived to be higher (vs. lower) in authentic pride, whereas the indirect effect of LMXSC on social undermining via malicious envy is stronger when the coworker compared is perceived to be higher (vs. lower) in hubristic pride. We conclude with theoretical and practical implications.
... Activating positive emotional response towards their outcomes. For example, verbal expression (related to actively seeking feedback or be motivated to tell others how well they did) [171], e.g., "proud of," "accomplished," "confident," "productive"; body activation, e.g., "expanded posture with head tilted slightly back and arms out [172]", "symmetrical vertical arm movement [171]", "symmetrical up-down repetitive arm action [173]". ...
Design-based learning (DBL) is an approach to learning where students learn in a self-directed way working on open-ended design challenges that are meaningful to them, creating a public artifact that communicates their solution to the challenge [1]. DBL has been shown to help students develop twenty-first-century skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking, and collaboration. Emotions are regarded as playing an essential role in learning. This thesis examines how students experience DBL and explores the role
emotions play in learning in DBL.
The inquiry into the role emotions can play in DBL started with a systematic literature review to capture the state-of-the-art in this field and an exploratory field observation involving students from a Dutch public high school (Heerbeeck College, Best). The theoretical and empirical evidence collected thus pointed out the need for tools for systematically capturing emotional data in the context of DBL. To address this need, we developed a self-reporting tool with an experience sampling approach tailored to the
DBL environment. This tool was used in a three-month mixed-method field study involving students from a Dutch public high school (Eckart College, Eindhoven). This study helped gain an in-depth understanding of how students experienced emotions during a DBL curriculum. Furthermore, we conducted a qualitative study involving undergraduate students at a Dutch university (Fontys University of applied sciences, Eindhoven). This study aimed to examine learning and emotions during DBL in a post-secondary education context and speculate whether and how an emotion awareness tool helps DBL. Building on these results, we designed an intervention to support the social sharing of emotions in a school context. The intervention was evaluated in two case studies, which were carried out in the backdrop of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.
The works presented in this inquiry contribute to the intersection of Child-Computer Interaction and Learning Sciences fields, particularly to the subfield focusing on design and making in learning. The four main contributions of this thesis are described as follows: (1) It describes the role that emotions can play in learning and highlights their importance, which may encourage future researchers to contribute to this area as well. (2) It introduces the Activity-and-Affect Model, which conceptualizes students’ emotional experience of DBL from a multi-dimensional view. This theoretical contribution may pave the way for a fundamental basis of conceptualizing DBL for future related research. (3) It contributes to a set of DBL guidelines considering the potential interactions between DBL
activities and students’ emotions. This could inspire future research and practice on how to orchestrate DBL activities that will foster positive emotional responses in students. (4) This thesis makes methodological contributions to the development of emotion measurement and emotion related intervention in DBL. Specifically, this thesis advocates three different approaches for capturing emotions in DBL and examines how to implement an intervention involving emotion awareness tools in DBL.
... These approaches assume that all individuals, regardless of their culture, ethnicity, and individual differences, have a set of universal emotion categories (e.g., anger, hatred, joy, sadness, and fear) which are biologically, and not psychologically, generated in reaction to social and emotional stimuli (Ekman and Cordaro, 2011). According to these sets of approaches, emotions are assumed to be associated with facial expressions in a one-to-one manner; that is, the face universally and consistently generates distinct signs as individuals experience particular emotions (e.g., experiencing fear leads to widening eyes) (Tracy and Matsumoto, 2008). ...
The present study assesses the developmental dynamics of TEI and its subdomains during learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in a longitudinal study. A sample of 309 EFL learners (217 females, 92 males) was used to assess the trajectories of the global factor of TEI as well as parallel development of the TEI subdomains over one year in the context of EFL classroom using parallel-process modeling (PPM) and factor of curve modeling (FCM). Additionally, we used emotion perception (EP) as a distal outcome in order to investigate how the growth parameters including intercept and slope factors in a TEI-FCM influence the distal outcome of EP. The results revealed that there is sufficient inter-individual variation and intra-individual trend within each subdomain, as well as a significant increase over time in four subdomains. Additionally, concerning the covariances within and among the subdomains of TEI, the PPM results revealed moderate to high associations between intercept and slope growth factors within and between these subdomains. Finally, regarding the direct association of the global growth factors (intercept and slope) of TEI on EP, the results indicated that intercept and slope of global TEI were associated with EP (γ 0 = 1.127, P 001; ˂ γ 1 = .321, P 001) ˂. More specifically, the intercepts and slopes of emotionality and sociability turned out to be significantly linked to the EP (γ 03 = 1.311, P 001; ˂ γ 13 = .684, P 001; ˂ γ 04 =.497, P 001; ˂ γ 14 = .127, P 001) ˂. These results suggest the dynamicity of TEI during learning a foreign language, which are discussed in the light of the potential variables associated with TEI and its related literature.
... For the same reason, it may also carry motivational consequences, as it may promote continuous persistence in challenging tasks that promise social rewards (Weidman et al., 2016;Williams & DeSteno, 2008). People not only experience pride, they also communicate pride to others; for example, via its non-verbal display (Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008). This highlights that emotions may also serve important functions at the social level (Keltner & Haidt, 1999). ...
Social comparisons—comparisons between the self and others—are a fundamental mechanism influencing people’s judgments, experiences, and behavior. Psychological research supports the notion that people constantly engage in social comparisons. Arguably, whenever they receive information about how others are, what others can and cannot do, or what others have achieved and have failed to achieve, they are inclined to relate this information to themselves (Dunning & Hayes, 1996). Likewise, whenever they want to know how they themselves are or what they themselves can and cannot do, they are likely to do so by comparing their own characteristics, fortunes, and weaknesses to those of others. One indicator for this robustness of social comparison is that people may sometimes even engage in comparisons with others who do not yield relevant information concerning the self (Gilbert et al., 1995). Another sign of the importance of social comparisons is their power in eliciting universal human emotions. We may feel pride when we succeed in outperforming competitors, marvel in admiration about the excellence of other but may also feel the pain of envying them (Crusius & Lange, 2017; Smith, 2000; Steckler & Tracy, 2014).
Because comparisons with others are such an essential human proclivity, it may not be
surprising that social comparison is a highly studied topic within social psychology. Three
broad questions have guided this research: Why do people engage in social comparisons?
To whom do they compare themselves? How do social comparisons influence the self ?
... Shame motivates the individual to inhibit actions that may cause further social devaluation (de Hooge et al., 2008;Fehr & Gächter, 2000), to conceal incriminating information (Leach & Cidam, 2015;Sznycer et al., 2015), and to withdraw from the situation (Wicker et al., 1983). When ashamed, the individual appeases (Keltner et al., 1997) and produces a stereotyped nonverbal display that deters attacks by signaling subordination (Keltner et al., 1997;Fessler, 1999;Gilbert, 2000;Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008;Weisfeld & Dillon, 2012). · Envy is elicited by indications of competitive superiority in one's positional rivals. ...
Social emotions appear to be behavior-regulating programs built by natural selection to solve adaptive problems in the domain of social valuation-the disposition to attend to, associate with, defer to, and aid target individuals based on their probable contributions to the fitness of the valuer. For example, shame functions to prevent and mitigate the costs of being socially devalued by others, whereas anger functions to correct those people who attach insufficient weight to the welfare of the self. Here we review theory and evidence suggesting that social emotions such as guilt, gratitude, anger, pride, shame, sadness, and envy are all governed by a common grammar of social valuation even when each emotion has its own distinct adaptive function and structure. We also provide evidence that social emotions and social valuation operate with a substantial degree of universality across cultures. This emotion-valuation constellation appears to shape human sociality through interpersonal interactions. Expanding upon this, we explore how signatures of this constellation may be evident in two spheres of human sociality: personality and the criminal justice system.
... Broadly, negative emotions are represented by constricting the body with downward orientations. For example, negative emotions (including sadness, shame, and guilt but not anger; see below) are expressed with the head down, upper body collapsed or bent forward, shoulders slumped, as well as less erect and expansive compared to positive emotions or the negative emotion of anger (Keltner, 1995;Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008;Wallbott, 1998). This nonverbal expression is similar to that of low dominance postures/opposite to that of high dominance postures. ...
For many people, emotions are frequently expressed in the context of communication with their God. The practice of prayer is clearly embodied and affords the study of full body expressions of emotions in a relevant context. Surprisingly uncharacterized in empirical scientific research, we document full body postures representing prayers in different emotional registers (i.e., prayer, worship, praise, thanksgiving, repentance, confession, anger toward God) and compare them to postures representing specific emotions varying on two basic affective dimensions (valence and dominance), and to specific relevant emotions (gratitude for thanksgiving, guilt for confession and repentance). US community participants with knowledge of Christianity (n = 93) were asked to show how they would express these feelings in the full body by positioning a small mannequin. Postures were analyzed to derive objective measurements of the body’s vertical, horizontal, and total space, and subjective perceptions of the same dimensions from a separate sample. An observational coding system was also developed to code for components of the body, such as head and arm positions. Results show distinct differences between postures representing the overarching categories of prayer versus worship. Further, postures representing praise and to a lesser extent those of thanksgiving were found to be expansive and oriented upward, slightly smaller than postures of positive valence but bigger than dominance. Postures representing repentance and confession were found to be constrictive and oriented downward, even smaller than postures of negative valence and similar to submission. These results add to our limited knowledge of postural expressions of emotions and particularly that of positive emotions. Implications for the psychology of religion are also discussed.
... In order to more strongly support the universality of kama muta as a distinct emotional expression, and the claim that the heartfelt gesture is part of its emotional signaling, research should examine interpretations and use of the gesture across cultures, among congenitally blind individuals, and among young children (Ekman, 1992;Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008;Tracy et al., 2013). Research identifying a nonverbal analog of the gesture in our primate relatives would also support universality. ...
We conducted two studies to explore the potential meanings associated with the “heartfelt” gesture, which involves placing one’s hand with a flat palm in the center of the chest. In Study 1, we approached 176 participants in various social settings and asked them to recall an example of the gesture and the emotion they associated with its use. Although shock and surprise emerged as important themes, participants reported social relational examples associated with intensely-felt “heartfelt” emotions and empathy. Women were more likely to recall an example of the gesture’s use than were men. In Study 2, we replicated the effects of Study 1 using a larger online sample (N = 252), finding that women were more likely than men to use the gesture, and revealing a significant correlation between gesture use and self-reported empathy. The studies highlight the emotional significance of the gesture and challenge the prevailing view that the gesture primarily communicates sincerity. Implications for the possibility that the gesture serves as a nonverbal signal of heartfelt connection to others and/or an emblem of empathy are discussed.
... A possible seventh universal emotion is that of contempt (Ekman & Friesen, 1986). In addition, Tracy and Matsumoto (2008) have provided evidence indicating that pride and shame are also characterized by universal facial expressions. From all this evidence for universality, it has been hypothesized that the facial expressions of emotion are innate, a view further supported by studies which have shown that blind individuals demonstrate the same spontaneous expressions as sighted individuals (e.g., Matsumoto & Willingham, 2009). ...
T he Psychology of Journalism takes a media psychological approach towards a better understanding of key aspects of news production and reception. Media Psychology is an emerging discipline which is concerned with understanding the interaction between individuals and communication technology. Scholars interested in this area ask questions concerning the way in which communication between individuals is shaped by the media in terms of both its social and cultural characteristics.
At a time when the role and function of news journalism are under intense public scrutiny, The Psychology of Journalism explores the psychological processes involved in the production, delivery, and consumption of news. With contributions from an international team of scholars with backgrounds in both media and psychology, the chapters provide theoretical and empirical evidence to better understand why and how journalists and audience alike select, attend, understand, and co-construct meaning from reported events.This book is suitable for students and researchers in Journalism, Media Communication, Political Communication, and Psychology.
... These findings are also consistent with behavioral indicators of shame (which was elicited in the swimsuit condition), which may make women feel the need to hide, disappear, and escape (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). For example, researchers have noted non-verbal behavioral indicators of shame (e.g., rounding the shoulders, head tilting down, making oneself physically smaller), when placed in a stressful environment (Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008). ...
Self-objectification negatively impacts body image, mental health, and cognitive performance outcomes in women and has been correlated with poorer physical performance. The purpose of this study was to determine if trying on a swimsuit (versus a sweater) impacted state self-objectification, body shame, social physique anxiety, intrinsic motivation, bodily awareness, and physical performance in university women. Female undergraduate students (N = 52) were randomly assigned to try on either a swimsuit (objectification condition) or sweater (control condition) and complete measures of self-objectification, body shame, appearance anxiety, intrinsic motivation, and interoceptive awareness, and perform a series of balance tasks. Women in the swimsuit condition reported higher state self-objectification, body-related shame and appearance anxiety, and lower intrinsic motivation compared to women in the sweater condition. In addition, women in the swimsuit condition restricted body movements during a 1-legged stand balance task. Consistent with objectification theory, women may have made smaller physical movements in an attempt to hide or cover up the body. Findings could have implications for promoting positive experiences during physical activity for women, such as in sport, exercise or rehabilitation settings.
... By following the theory on micro-expressions, 10,20 we made sure that no obvious nonverbal signals associated with success (e.g., raising both fists above the head) and failure (e.g., covering the face with both hands) were seen in the videos (cf. Tracy and Matsumoto 44 ) as these would be too informative cues to estimate the score. Additionally, the selected video sequences only showed the coaches. ...
This study aims to investigate the communicative content of nonverbal (emotion-) expressions of soccer coaches during a game and how these provide information about the current situation and how this information might impact players’ self-confidence during a game. In Studies 1 (N = 137) and 2 (N = 102) we investigated if soccer coaches are estimated to be happier and are rated higher on dimensions related to social status when their team is leading compared to when it is trailing. Results showed that observers rated coaches as happier, more dominant, more proud, and more confident when their team was leading. In Study 3 (N = 152), participants watched short videos depicting the coach's NVB during a game and rated whether the coach's team was trailing or leading. The results showed that observers could clearly distinguish between leading and trailing coaches. In the fourth study, 72 soccer players were asked to watch the same videos from the first three studies and rate their own level of confidence in reaction to the coach's NVB in a hypothetical scenario. The results indicate that a coach's NVB can influence his athletes' self-confidence during a game. The practical implications of the findings regarding the body language of coaches are discussed.
... And, as corruption is largely a social phenomenon resulting from the abuse of entrusted power that will often occur in hierarchical contexts, other important sociomoral concerns may be reciprocity and hierarchy. An emotion related to the sociomoral concern for reciprocity is gratitude and emotions related to the sociomoral concern of hierarchy are pride or again shame and envy (e.g., Lange & Crusius, 2015;Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008). Notably, each (sociomoral) concern relates to multiple emotions and one emotion can relate to multiple (sociomoral) concerns (e.g., Landmann & Hess, 2018). ...
Corruption poses one of the biggest current societal problems that commonly originates in organizational settings. Most approaches explain corruption based on rational cost-benefit calculations, neglecting the role of emotions. This dominant approach stands in contrast to the observation that most corruption cases are emotionally charged. A growing set of articles, scattered across disciplines, documents that emotions predict corrupt behavior, that own corrupt conduct elicits emotions, and that third parties experience emotions in response to others’ corrupt acts. We propose that emotional antecedents drive or prevent corruption, whilst emotional consequences reinforce or deter future corrupt behavior. We integrated these diverse streams of research linking emotions and corruption in two steps: First, we distilled established empirical facts related to the link between emotions and corruption from articles (k = 53) identified in a systematic, pre-registered literature review. Second, we developed an integrative framework based on legal and social norms that accounts for these phenomena. Our novel norms framework (a) structures the literature on the link of emotions and corruption, (b) sets a new research agenda, and (c) complements previous evidence-based anti-corruption policies.
... Affectively, pride is a major motivator for status-seeking (Cheng et al., 2010) and can signal status achievement through pride displays (e.g., posture, strutting). External displays of pride are likely innate given evidence that congenitally blind humans physically respond to success similar to sighted individuals (Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008). Notable differences exist in displays of failure among sighted and congenitally blind individuals suggesting sighted individuals may suppress low-status displays. ...
Primates have developed a unique set of complex drives for successful group living, yet theorists rarely contemplate their taxonomy and how such drives relate to affective dynamics fundamental for group success. Affective dynamics and drive fulfilment exert mutual influence on one another, ultimately collectively promoting or undermining survival. We first identify six core benefits of group living common among both humans and other animals, and from this foundation we propose three broad social drives that have evolved to preserve or enhance group living benefits: (1) Mutualism comprises cooperation, reciprocity, trust, and fairness; (2) Affiliation comprises assimilation and belonging, whereby one aims to fit into the group through adherence to group norms and ideologies; (3) Status-Seeking is represented by a drive to build one’s value in the group and acquire differential access to mates and other resources. We identify affective dynamics that facilitate each social drive: (1) Reactive flexibility involves qualitative shifts in affect in response to shifting goals, which facilitates mutualism; (2) Affective synchrony is the reproduction of another individual’s emotions in oneself and facilitates social affiliation; (3) Regulatory flexibility facilitates status-seeking through a broad repertoire of regulatory approaches during strategic behavioral pursuits. Finally, we posit that fulfilling Mutualism, Affiliation, and Status-Seeking (MASS) drives enhances the benefits of social living and supports development of fundamental affective dynamics.
... Furthermore, Shiota (2017;Shiota et al., 2017) has shed light on an increasingly complex network of positive emotions. Others have argued convincingly for the inclusion of pride and shame (Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008;Tracy & Robins, 2004), embarrassment (Keltner, 1995), awe (Stellar et al., 2018), gratitude (Armenta et al., 2017), nostalgia, and sympathy (Cowen & Keltner, 2017) to be counted among the universal emotions. Yet, the vast majority of research on emotion expression has narrowly focused on the facial channel (de Gelder, 2009;Witkower & Tracy, 2019). ...
Since Darwin’s (1872) publication of The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, emotion researchers have made tremendous progress in understanding the function, structure, and significance of emotion. Yet, the bulk of this work has focused squarely on the face. Recent research has shown the importance of augmenting facial expression research with a focus on other modalities, and carefully attending to the role of context in disambiguating emotional cues. This special issue includes theoretical and empirical papers that advance our understanding of emotional expression beyond the face. Emerging themes from this special issue comprise advances in the modal expression of positive emotion, the advantage of studying bodily expressions of emotion, and the importance of spontaneous, authentic, and dynamic emotional expressions, particularly ones that are situated into their appropriate context.
... The head pose movement involves the orientation of the participant's head. The research analyzed the head pose to understand a person's point of attention and interest [70][71][72]. The participant's head pose variable consists of the yaw (X), pitch (Y), and roll (Z) on threedimensional planes, represented by Euler angles (see Fig. 7). ...
Artificial entities, such as virtual agents, have become more pervasive. Their long-term presence among humans requires the virtual agent's ability to express appropriate emotions to elicit the necessary empathy from the users. Affective empathy involves behavioral mimicry, a synchronized co-movement between dyadic pairs. However, the characteristics of such synchrony between humans and virtual agents remain unclear in empathic interactions. Our study evaluates the participant's behavioral synchronization when a virtual agent exhibits an emotional expression congruent with the emotional context through facial expressions, behavioral gestures, and voice. Participants viewed an emotion-eliciting video stimulus (negative or positive) with a virtual agent. The participants then conversed with the virtual agent about the video, such as how the participant felt about the content. The virtual agent expressed emotions congruent with the video or neutral emotion during the dialog. The participants' facial expressions, such as the facial expressive intensity and facial muscle movement, were measured during the dialog using a camera. The results showed the participants' significant behavioral synchronization (i.e., cosine similarity ≥ .05) in both the negative and positive emotion conditions, evident in the participant's facial mimicry with the virtual agent. Additionally, the participants' facial expressions, both movement and intensity, were significantly stronger in the emotional virtual agent than in the neutral virtual agent. In particular, we found that the facial muscle intensity of AU45 (Blink) is an effective index to assess the participant's synchronization that differs by the individual's empathic capability (low, mid, high). Based on the results, we suggest an appraisal criterion to provide empirical conditions to validate empathic interaction based on the facial expression measures.
... Previous studies have demonstrated that people in Western and East Asian cultures are affected by cultural differences not only in higher-order cognition, such as Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 2 December 2021 | Volume 12 | Article 773916 self-concept and moral judgment (Markus and Kitayama, 1991;Awad et al., 2020), but also in fundamental visual perception (Kitayama et al., 2003;Ueda et al., 2018). In contrast, emotional expression is universal across populations (Ekman, 1999;Tracy and Matsumoto, 2008: but see Barrett, 2017). Therefore, researchers must be aware of whether the findings resulting from their studies can be generalized to Homo sapiens worldwide (Henrich et al., 2010(Henrich et al., , 2020Kupferschmidt, 2019). ...
Recent cultural studies have discussed universality and diversity in human behavior using numerous samples investigated worldwide. We aimed to quantitatively extend this discussion to various research activities in psychology in terms of geographic regions and time trends. Most psychology departments have specialists in various fields of psychology. Further, research institutions in all regions typically aim to provide systematic and balanced research education. Nevertheless, most researchers recognize universal features and patterns of diversity in research activities in psychology in terms of regional differences and time trends. However, these arguments remain intuitive and vague, and no studies have conducted quantitative analyses. To this end, we conducted topic modeling for the abstracts of psychological articles with the regions of author affiliations and publication periods as covariates. The results showed that the topic proportions related to basic research were high in North-Central America, whereas those related to clinical research were high in Europe. Interestingly, the regional differences shown by topic modeling were not observed in the frequency analysis of keywords, indicating that topic modeling revealed implicit characteristics. Moreover, we observed an increasing trend of neuroscience topics across publication periods. However, this trend was not valid for the psychology journal Psychological Science . Taken together, our results suggest diversity of geographic regions and periods in research activities in psychology. More importantly, our findings indicate that universality holds neither for human behavior nor research activities on human mental processes.
... Barnett, 2006). Furthermore, expressing positive emotion (e.g., happiness, enjoyment, pride) has been suggested to promote and boost confidence and to signal dominance and superiority (Brown and Marshall, 2001;Tracy and Robins, 2007a,b;Tracy and Matsumoto, 2008). The emotional expression may also be reinforced by an emotional contagion process in the team. ...
The current case study focused on a crucial match in the qualification for the Norwegian Premier League (Eliteserien). In the match, the participants of the study experienced a radical change in performance toward the end of the second half, from being behind by several goals to scoring 3 goals in 6 min and winning the qualifying game. The purpose of this study was therefore to examine the perceptions and reflections of players and coaches (sporting director) on what occurred within their own team and within the opposing team. The momentum shift in the opposition team can be described as a collective collapse. In the study, the theoretical collective collapse process model was used as a guide for the design of the interview questions where five semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants involved in the match (players, coach, and sporting director). The participants watched excerpt clips from the match to recall the main events, which they subsequently reflected on. The results highlighted the importance of the "before-game" aspects (i.e., pressure, first game result), the "during-the-game" behavior (i.e., goals scored, playing with a low degree of risk) and the cognitive (i.e., feelings of pressure, despair) and emotional reactions (i.e., frustration, joy) to the match unfolding. In addition, social contagion processes were evident in both teams relating to emotion and behavior. Overall, the data from this study investigated the general structure of the process model of collective sport team collapse and found support for the notion of a temporal cascade of causes for a team collapse. Future research is encouraged to examine this model, to provide guidance to teams, coaches, and sport psychologists in order to make recommendations for dealing with collective collapse in sport teams.
... People feel many different positive emotions, including amusement while watching stand-up comedy (Gross & Levenson, 1995), awe while viewing beautiful landscapes , pride while winning a competition (Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008), craving while looking at delicious food (Nederkoorn et al., 2000), and sexual desire while seeing attractive others (Bos et al., 2013). These positive emotions differ in many ways (e.g., Tong, 2015), but it is not yet clear whether and to what extent they produce different physiological responses (Kreibig, 2010). ...
Autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity is a fundamental component of emotional responding. It is not clear, however, whether positive emotional states are associated with differential ANS reactivity. To address this issue, we conducted a meta-analytic review of 120 articles (686 effect sizes, total N = 6,546), measuring ANS activity during 11 elicited positive emotions, namely amusement, attachment love, awe, contentment, craving, excitement, gratitude, joy, nurturant love, pride, and sexual desire. We identified a widely dispersed collection of studies. Univariate results indicated that positive emotions produce no or weak and highly variable increases in ANS reactivity. However, the limitations of work to date – which we discuss – mean that our conclusions should be treated as empirically grounded hypotheses that future research should validate.
... This mode of covariation suggests that individuals characterized with positive social assets tend to show polarized arousal responses to life events. Introduction Some emotions, especially six [1][2][3] or up to nine [4][5][6] categorical emotions which are tightly associated with distinct nonverbal expressions, appear to be universal at high degrees. On the other hand, there has been evidence also showing that perception of emotion varies across cultures at significant degrees [7,8]. ...
People experience the same event but do not feel the same way. Such individual differences in emotion response are believed to be far greater than those in any other mental functions. Thus, to understand what makes people individuals, it is important to identify the systematic structures of individual differences in emotion response and elucidate how such structures relate to what aspects of psychological characteristics. Reflecting this importance, many studies have attempted to relate emotions to psychological characteristics such as personality traits, psychosocial states, and pathological symptoms across individuals. However, systematic and global structures that govern the across-individual covariation between the domain of emotion responses and that of psychological characteristics have been rarely explored previously, which limits our understanding of the relationship between individual differences in emotion response and psychological characteristics. To overcome this limitation, we acquired high-dimensional data sets in both emotion-response (8 measures) and psychological-characteristic (68 measures) domains from the same pool of individuals (86 undergraduate or graduate students) and carried out the canonical correlation analysis in conjunction with the principal component analysis on those data sets. For each participant, the emotion-response measures were quantified by regressing affective-rating responses to visual narrative stimuli onto the across-participant average responses to those stimuli, while the psychological-characteristic measures were acquired from 19 different psychometric questionnaires grounded in personality, psychosocial-factor, and clinical-problem taxonomies. We found a single robust mode of population covariation, particularly between the ’accuracy’ and ’sensitivity’ measures of arousal responses in the emotion domain and many ‘psychosocial’ measures in the psychological-characteristics domain. This mode of covariation suggests that individuals characterized with positive social assets tend to show polarized arousal responses to life events.
... On the one hand, the fact that responses cohere inconsistently has weakened the hypothesis that coherence is a defining feature of emotion. On the other hand, the hypothesis that emotion phenomena emerge from the interaction of neurocognitive systems that are not themselves emotion systems (Barrett, 2006;Barrett & Russell, 2015)-that orchestrating emotion programs lack biological reality-can explain variation in emotion across situations, individuals, and cultures (Boiger et al., 2013;Crivelli et al., 2016;Gendron et al., 2014aGendron et al., , 2014b), but has a hard time accounting for the fact that in addition to differences there are similarities in emotion, across situations, individuals, and cultures, including industrial societies (Cowen et al., 2019(Cowen et al., , 2021Durkee et al., 2019;Scherer & Wallbott, 1994;Sell, Sznycer, Al-Shawaf, et al., 2017;Sznycer et al., 2012;Sznycer, Al-Shawaf, et al., 2017;Sznycer, Tooby, et al., 2016;Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008), small-scale societies (Scelza et al., 2020;Sznycer, Xygalatas, Agey, et al., 2018), and throughout history (Cowen & Keltner, 2020;Sznycer & Patrick, 2020). ...
The synchronized co-activation of multiple responses-motivational, behavioral, and physiological-has been taken as a defining feature of emotion. Such response coherence has been observed inconsistently however, and this has led some to view emotion programs as lacking biological reality. Yet, response coherence is not always expected or desirable if an emotion program is to carry out its adaptive function. Rather, the hallmark of emotion is the capacity to orchestrate multiple mechanisms adaptively-responses will co-activate in stereotypical fashion or not depending on how the emotion orchestrator interacts with the situation. Nevertheless, might responses cohere in the general case where input variables are specified minimally? Here we focus on shame as a case study. We measure participants' responses regarding each of 27 socially devalued actions and personal characteristics. We observe internal and external coherence: The intensities of felt shame and of various motivations of shame (hiding, lying, destroying evidence, and threatening witnesses) vary in proportion (i) to one another, and (ii) to the degree to which audiences devalue the disgraced individual-the threat shame defends against. These responses cohere both within and between the United States and India. Further, alternative explanations involving the low-level variable of arousal do not seem to account for these results, suggesting that coherence is imparted by a shame system. These findings indicate that coherence can be observed at multiple levels and raise the possibility that emotion programs orchestrate responses, even in those situations where coherence is low.
... Emotions are nonverbally expressed by facial expressions (Ekman, 1992). However, bodily expressions such as postures and/or hand gestures also display emotions (Aviezer et al., 2012a;Lausberg, 2013;Meeren et al., 2005;Tracy and Matsumoto, 2008;Wallbott, 1998). In fact, recent research suggests that bodily expressions of emotions might be even more relevant than facial expressions in order to correctly identify emotions in humans (Aviezer et al., 2012a;Meeren et al., 2005). ...
Introduction
: Depressive individuals are impaired in the recognition of emotions in others’. Recent research suggests that the recognition of nonverbal expressions of emotions in other people may depend on the analysis of bodily rather than facial expressions. Therefore, we investigated if an impaired recognition of emotions by depressed individuals is body part specific.
Methods
: Clinically diagnosed depressed and healthy matched controls were instructed to identify nonverbal expressions of positive (happiness), neutral, and negative emotions (sadness) via the face, the body, or the body and face.
Results
: Depressed participants responded significantly less correctly overall when compared to non-depressed individuals. The recognition of nonverbal expressions of happiness by the body negatively predicted the Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II) score.
Discussion
: The data revealed that the impaired recognition of nonverbal expressions of emotions in others by depressed individuals is not body part specific. Nevertheless, depressive symptoms seem to be related to the recognition of bodily expressions of happiness. Future studies must address whether impairments of depressive individuals are related to nonverbal expressions of the whole body.
... Consistent with findings that individuals with greater sport expertise generally have better perceptual-cognitive skills (Mann et al., 2007), individuals with more experience in tennis seem to be more able to recognize the affective state behind the non-verbal behaviours than individuals without such experience. At the same time, a study has revealed that congenitally blind athletes show similar behavioural responses to success or failure as sighted athletes, suggesting that these responses are partly biologically innate (Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008). These findings are in line with a bio-cultural framework, which emphasizes the role of both nature and cultural learning in the decoding of non-verbal behaviours (Furley, 2021). ...
In tennis, the non-verbal behaviours shown after a rally may indicate the affective state of players. The purpose of the present study was to assess whether (a) the point outcome, (b) the duration of video-excerpts, and (c) the tennis expertise of the participants would influence the recognition rates of the affective state. To that end, 115 participants were shown non-verbal behaviour of tennis players after a point and asked to rate whether the player had just won or lost a point. The results indicate that the recognition rates were higher for lost than for won points. Moreover, participants who were members of a tennis club had a higher recognition rate. Finally, there was no difference in the recognition rate regarding the duration of video excerpts. The findings point to a negativity bias and the bio-cultural framework in relation to the recognition of affective states associated with non-verbal behaviour.
... By contrast, in line with a statusmanagement, non-moral function of shame, shame tracks all types of threats of social devaluation across cultures: it is typically activated by behaviors that are morally irrelevant yet indicate a low potential to impose costs on or benefit others, e.g. being physically weak, unattractive, incompetent, dumb, not socially influential (Durkee et al., 2019;Sznycer et al., 2016;Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008). ...
In recent decades, a large body of work has highlighted the importance of emotional processes in moral cognition. Since then, a heterogeneous bundle of emotions as varied as anger, guilt, shame, contempt, empathy, gratitude, and disgust have been proposed to play an essential role in moral psychology. However, the inclusion of these emotions in the moral domain often lacks a clear functional rationale, generating conflations between merely social and properly moral emotions. Here, we build on (i) evolutionary theories of morality as an adaptation for attracting others’ cooperative investments, and on (ii) specifications of the distinctive form and content of moral cognitive representations. On this basis, we argue that only indignation (“moral anger”) and guilt can be rigorously characterized as moral emotions, operating on distinctively moral representations. Indignation functions to reclaim benefits to which one is morally entitled, without exceeding the limits of justice. Guilt functions to motivate individuals to compensate their violations of moral contracts. By contrast, other proposed moral emotions (e.g. empathy, shame, disgust) appear only superficially associated with moral cognitive contents and adaptive challenges. Shame doesn’t track, by design, the respect of moral obligations, but rather social valuation, the two being not necessarily aligned. Empathy functions to motivate prosocial behavior between interdependent individuals, independently of, and sometimes even in contradiction with the prescriptions of moral intuitions. While disgust is often hypothesized to have acquired a moral role beyond its pathogen-avoidance function, we argue that both evolutionary rationales and psychological evidence for this claim remain inconclusive for now.
... Pride also prompts individuals to send signals of their high social status through a set of spontaneous non-verbal expressions, including a small smile, a slight backward tilt of the head, an expanded posture, or having one's arms akimbo with the hands on the hips Robins, 2004, 2008). These clues can imply an improvement in social status, and even blind athletes have these tendencies (Tracy and Matsumoto, 2008). An additional study has also shown that the performance of pride is linked to high status (Shariff et al., 2012). ...
Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) influences consumers' purchase decisions, but few studies have investigated the antecedents that lead consumers to create different types of eWOM. From the perspective of social interactions, this research explored how two subtypes of pride not only compel consumers to create eWOM but also differently impact four types of eWOM and their mechanisms. Study 1 manipulated the pride state and found that authentic pride promoted positive eWOM and constructive eWOM, while hubristic pride promoted negative eWOM and destructive eWOM. Study 2 examined the effect of pride on eWOM at the trait level and tested the mediating effect of their use of social status pursuit strategy. Overall, this study increases the understanding of different types of eWOM and broadens the literature of the effect of pride and social status pursuit strategy in the context of consumption.
This study examined cross-cultural similarities and differences in antecedents and appraisals of triumph. Participants in the U.S., Serbia, Russia, and Japan provided open-ended descriptions of previous antecedent events that elicited experiences of triumph, and completed a standard appraisal questionnaire about those events. Events that elicited pride were also included for comparison. The open-ended responses were coded using a framework that delineated theoretical characteristics of triumph based on previous research. Findings indicated cross-cultural similarities in the antecedents and appraisals of triumph-eliciting events. Cultural variations were also found, especially between Japan and the other cultural groups and with regard to self-evaluations, which suggested the role of culture in triggering and appraising emotion-eliciting events. These findings extended empirical evidence about these important components of triumph, further contributing to its possibility as a discrete emotion.
Discrimination of facial expressions is an elementary function of the human brain. While the way emotions are represented in the brain has long been debated, common and specific neural representations in recognition of facial expressions are also complicated. To examine brain organizations and asymmetry on discrete and dimensional facial emotions, we conducted an activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis and meta-analytic connectivity modelling on 141 studies with a total of 3138 participants. We found consistent engagement of the amygdala and a common set of brain networks across discrete and dimensional emotions. The left-hemisphere dominance of the amygdala and AI across categories of facial expression, but category-specific lateralization of the vmPFC, suggesting a flexibly asymmetrical neural representations of facial expression recognition. These results converge to characteristic activation and connectivity patterns across discrete and dimensional emotion categories in recognition of facial expressions. Our findings provide the first quantitatively meta-analytic brain network-based evidence supportive of the psychological constructionist hypothesis in facial expression recognition.
Within social functionalist theory (SFT), emotions structure attachment relations, cooperative alliances, hierarchies, and collectives. Within this line of thinking, a rich array of positive emotions enable the formation and negotiation of these relationships. Guided by these arguments, we synthesize how top-down confirmatory studies and data-driven, computational studies converge on evidence for 11 positive emotions with distinct experience, expression, and physiology. This taxonomy includes amusement, awe, compassion, contentment, desire, love, joy, interest, pride, relief, and triumph. We conclude by considering how recent taxonomic efforts will advance emotion science in mapping the distinct forms and functions of the positive emotions.
Social Functionalist Theory (SFT) emerged 20 years ago to orient emotion science to the social nature of emotion. Here we expand upon SFT and make the case for how emotions, relationships, and culture constitute one another. First, we posit that emotions enable the individual to meet six "relational needs" within social interactions: security, commitment, status, trust, fairness, and belongingness. Building upon this new theorising, we detail four principles concerning emotional experience, cognition, expression, and the cultural archiving of emotion. We conclude by considering the bidirectional influences between culture, relationships, and emotion, outlining areas of future inquiry.
Außer der Frage nach dem Wie bei der Mediengestaltung gibt es auch ein Wie beim Auftritt. Beim Wie geht es um die Präsentation der Person. Die Präsentation einer Person wird bestimmt durch die vier Faktoren: Vorbereitung, Auftrittsfreude (innere Einstellung), Lampenfieber (Auftrittsangst) sowie Körpersprache. Diese Faktoren hängen alle miteinander zusammen und beeinflussen sich wechselseitig. Über die Körpersprache werden viele Informationen gesendet, wie der Einsatz der Stimme, die Mimik, die Gestik, die Haltung, der Gang, welche die innere Einstellung beeinflussen. Auch die gegenseitige und umkehrbare Beeinflussung von Körpersprache und Stimmung werden beschrieben. Nicht nur der Stimme, auch der Sprache kommt bei der Präsentation eine Bedeutung zu. Im Idealfall spricht die präsentierende Person frei und formuliert spontan, anschaulich, abwechslungsreich und deutlich. Dann wird die Präsentation nicht nur gelingen, sondern auch erfolgreich sein.
Pride is an important emotion that functions positively for mastery, proficiency, and success in sports. The purpose of this study was to classify pride experiences of athletes, and to explore their characteristics. University student-athletes (n=195) were asked to come to think of and describe their experiences of pride in sport. The collected emotional episodes were first organized into three components: “situation,” “incident,” and “individual.” After that, each component was further classified as follows: First, “situation” was categorized into five categories: ‘achievement,’ ‘praise,’ ‘desirable action,’ ‘limelight,’ and ‘cheered.’ Next, “incident” was categorized into seven categories: ‘sociality,’ ‘accomplishment,’ ‘diligence,’ ‘benefit,’ ‘ability,’ ‘cooperation,’ and ‘success.’ Then, the “individual” was categorized into four categories: ‘self,’ ‘teammates,’ ‘group,’ and ‘entourage.’ Chi square test for categorical variables in each component showed that ‘achievement,’ ‘sociality,’ and ‘self’ occurred significantly more often. Correspondence analysis then revealed that ‘self’ was related to ‘achievement,’ ‘sociality,’ and ‘diligence,’ while ‘teammate’ was related to ‘desirable action,’ ‘accomplishment,’ and ‘ability.’ These results provide two suggestions: 1) pride is experienced not only in superiority by social comparison, but also in building good relationships with others; 2) university student-athletes tend to experience pride in relationships rather than superiority. It will be necessary to substantiate these findings in future research.
How does shame affect social cohesion? Prior work has drawn divergent conclusions to this question because shame can spur maladaptive behaviors for people who experience it. However, past work has overlooked the interindividual effects of shame—how one’s expression of shame affects people who witness it. We investigated these social-learning effects of shame and identified norm transmission as a reliable route by which shame facilitates social cohesion. Across five studies and two supplemental studies with U.S.-based adult participants ( N = 3,726), we manipulated whether someone conveys shame, no specific emotion, or other discrete emotions regarding their behavior. We then assessed the effect of this emotional expression on participants’ norm inferences and norm-conforming behavior. We found that shame broadcasts particularly strong signals about social norms, and people adjust their behavior to align with these norms. We discuss how these findings challenge common conclusions about shame and generate insights about shame’s influence on social life.
Technological progress in the field of media and communication as well as the dynamics of development of modern communication tools pose a challenge for studying the issue of space in communication and proxemics theory. The mediatisation of almost all aspects of human life is based on increasingly better communication tools that transform time-space relations in communication. Natural forms of interpersonal communication are increasingly being replaced by mediatized communication. Electronic communicators are becoming a kind of laboratory that modifies contexts, channels and codes of communication acts, especially in the proxemics field. Therefore, the purpose of our analyses is to show some aspects of these changes from the perspective of three basic proxemics categories: interpersonal distance, territoriality and space arrangement. In this way, we want to achieve the triple goal of our analysis: cognitive, research and practical. The cognitive goal is an attempt to show changes in the proxemics code in mediatized communication. The research goal is to describe the functioning of this code in electronic communication practice. However, the practical goal of our analyses is to point out the important rules for using proxemics in improving the quality of personality and efficiency of communication.
Syllabus for COGS 180-02: Embodied Approaches to Mind and Language (University of California, Merced, Spring 2022).
The article presents a variety of gesture types used as celebrations during or after soccer matches and explains the forms, meaning, reference and functions of the gestures as a semiotic phenomenon. The qualitative analysis of media images and comments on celebratory performances shows that pre-planned, creative celebrations, including trademarks or signatures, which have recently overshadowed spontaneous, conventionalized displays of affect, take the form of interactional gestures of different types: performatives, regulators, pointing, icons, metaphors, pantomime, emblems or signs, as well as the form of compositions of gestures, such as icons and pointing. During the match, gestures of all the above types serve to display affects and take on other new functions. Also, even gestures like regulators, identified in literature as conversational ones, are used without the accompanying speech. A disintegrated speech context for the interpretation of the meaning and reference of celebratory gestures is provided in after-match media discourse.
"Did you know the most dominant apes and monkeys are usually the kindest? They share the most food, groom others more often, break up fights, are slow to anger, and breathe in a relaxed manner. Those on the bottom of the social hierarchy are the opposite. They are stingy, combative, irritable, anxious, depressed, and they breathe shallowly. It is not easy for a submissive primate to become dominant. They have mindsets, mannerisms, and muscle tension that keep them from escaping their subordinate social strategy and the chronic stress it produces.
All of this generalizes to people. If you want to be free of negative emotion, you need to rehabilitate physical trauma in your breath, eyes, face, voice, heart, gut, spine, and brain. Program Peace will coach you to do precisely this by first retraining your breathing pattern, and then walking you through dozens of innovative and effective self-care exercises. After creating new mindsets and mannerisms, and learning to reinvigorate muscles you never knew you had, you will find yourself more confident, healthier, kinder, and reprogrammed for peace."
The issue falls into two sections. The first covers different geographical
and temporal contexts. The second applies its insights to a specific case,
focusing on Chinese martial arts.
Gratitude and pride are both positive emotions. Yet gratitude motivates people to help others and build up relationships, whereas pride motivates people to pursue achievements and build on self-esteem. Although these social outcomes are crucial for humans to be evolutionarily adaptive, no study so far has systematically compared gratitude and pride to understand why and how they can motivate humans differently. In this review, we compared gratitude and pride from their etymologies, cognitive prerequisites, motivational functions, and brain regions involved. By integrating the evidence from brain and behavior, we suggest that gratitude and pride share a common reward basis, yet gratitude is more related to theory of mind, while pride is more related to self-referential processing. Moreover, we proposed a cognitive neuroscientific model to explain the dynamics in gratitude and pride under a reinforcement learning framework.
Previous research has tested whether culture moderates the relationship between head tilt and perceptions of a cooperation-relevant construct. In this paper, we replicated the effects of head posture on perceived traits and compared Chinese and American participants to explore whether difference in cultural background (collectivist and individualist) affects perceptual attribution. Specifically, we investigated how head posture (level, up or down) affects perceptions of cooperativeness. In Experiment 1, Chinese and American participants rated Asian and Caucasian faces in three postures for perceived cooperativeness on a seven-point Likert scale. In Experiment 2, participants ranked the cooperativeness of the three postures of the same faces. In Experiment 3, participants scrolled through face images and manually manipulated vertical head angle to maximise apparent cooperativeness. We found that for both Chinese and American participants a neutral head level posture was perceived as more cooperative than head up and down postures. The optimal head posture for maximised apparent cooperativeness was close to level but with a slight downward rotation. While there was cross-cultural consistency in perceptions, Chinese participants exhibited greater sensitivity to postural cues in their judgments of cooperation compared to American participants. Our results suggest a profound effect of posture on the perception of cooperativeness that is common across cultures and that there are additional subtle cross-cultural differences in the cues to cooperativeness.
Humans spontaneously attribute character traits to strangers based on their facial appearance. Although these ‘first impressions’ typically have no basis in reality, some authors have assumed that they have an innate origin. By contrast, the Trait Inference Mapping (TIM) account proposes that first impressions are products of culturally acquired associative mappings that allow activation to spread from representations of facial appearance to representations of trait profiles. According to TIM, cultural instruments, including propaganda, illustrated storybooks, art and iconography, ritual, film, and TV, expose many individuals within a community to common sources of correlated face–trait experience, yielding first impressions that are shared by many, but typically inaccurate. Here, we review emerging empirical findings, many of which accord with TIM, and argue that future work must distinguish first impressions based on invariant facial features (e.g., shape) from those based on facial behaviours (e.g., expressions).
Body language is a powerful form of non-verbal communication providing important information about the emotions and intentions of others. The ability to infer other's emotions from their bodily movements and postures recruits an extended network in the brain that encompasses both cortical and subcortical regions. In this chapter, we review recent evidence suggesting that the cerebellum is a critical node of this network. Specifically, we present convergent findings from patients', neuroimaging and non-invasive brain stimulation studies that have shown that the cerebellum is involved in both biological motion perception and in discrimination of bodily emotional expressions. We discuss the potential underlying mechanisms that drive the recruitment of the sensorimotor (anterior) and cognitive (posterior) cerebellum in inferring others' emotions through their bodily movements and postures and how the cerebellum may exert these functions within different cortico-cerebellar and limbic-cerebellar networks dedicated to body language perception.
This study found that the emotional facial expressions of 10 congenitally blind and 10 sighted children, aged 8-11, were similar. However, the frequency of certain facial movements was higher in the blind children than in the sighted children, and social influences were evident only in the expressions of the sighted children, who often masked their negative emotions.
People in different cultures have strikingly different construals of the self, of others, and of the interdependence of the 2. These construals can influence, and in many cases determine, the very nature of individual experience, including cognition, emotion, and motivation. Many Asian cultures have distinct conceptions of individuality that insist on the fundamental relatedness of individuals to each other. The emphasis is on attending to others, fitting in, and harmonious interdependence with them. American culture neither assumes nor values such an overt connectedness among individuals. In contrast, individuals seek to maintain their independence from others by attending to the self and by discovering and expressing their unique inner attributes. As proposed herein, these construals are even more powerful than previously imagined. Theories of the self from both psychology and anthropology are integrated to define in detail the difference between a construal of the self as independent and a construal of the self as interdependent. Each of these divergent construals should have a set of specific consequences for cognition, emotion, and motivation; these consequences are proposed and relevant empirical literature is reviewed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Naturalistic observation at a bowling alley (
N = 1,793 balls) shows that bowlers often smiled when socially engaged, looking at and talking to others, but not necessarily after scoring a spare or a strike. In a 2nd study, bowlers (
N = 166 balls) rarely smiled while facing the pins but often smiled when facing their friends. At a hockey game, fans (
N = 3,726 faces) smiled both when they were socially involved and after events favorable to their team. Pedestrians (
N = 663) were much more likely to smile when talking but only slightly more likely to smile in response to nice weather than to unpleasant weather. These 4 studies suggest a strong and robust association of smiling with a social motivation and an erratic association with emotional experience. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A total of 176 computer-generated mannequin figures were produced from descriptions of postural expressions of emotion in order to investigate the attribution of emotion to static body postures. Each posture was rendered from 3 viewing angles and presented to participants in a forced-decision task. Concordance rates for attributions of 6 emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise) ranged from zero for many disgust postures to over 90 percent for some anger and sadness postures. Anatomical variables and viewing angle were shown to predict participants' responses. Analysis of the confusion matrix suggested a circumplex solution with happiness and surprise sharing a similar position, and few confusions between the other four emotions. The means by which emotions may be attributed to static body postures are discussed, as are avenues for further research.
Research on counterfactual thinking has shown that people's emotional responses to events are influenced by their thoughts about "what might have been." The authors extend these findings by documenting a familiar occasion in which those who are objectively better off nonetheless feel worse. In particular, an analysis of the emotional reactions of bronze and silver medalists at the 1992 Summer Olympics--both at the conclusion of their events and on the medal stand--indicates that bronze medalists tend to be happier than silver medalists. The authors attribute these results to the fact that the most compelling counterfactual alternative for the silver medalist is winning the gold, whereas for the bronze medalist it is finishing without a medal. Support for this interpretation was obtained from the 1992 Olympics and the 1994 Empire State Games. The discussion focuses on the implications of endowment and contrast for well being.
Recent research has shown that pride, like the "basic" emotions of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise, has a distinct, nonverbal expression that can be recognized by adults (J. L. Tracy & R. W. Robins, 2004b). In 2 experiments, the authors examined whether young children can identify the pride expression and distinguish it from expressions of happiness and surprise. Results suggest that (a) children can recognize pride at above-chance levels by age 4 years; (b) children recognize pride as well as they recognize happiness; (c) pride recognition, like happiness and surprise recognition, improves from age 3 to 7 years; and (d) children's ability to recognize pride cannot be accounted for by the use of a process of elimination (i.e., an exclusion rule) to identify an unknown entity. These findings have implications for the development of emotion recognition and children's ability to perceive and communicate pride.
Within- and between-nations differences in norms for experiencing emotions were analyzed in a cross-cultural study with 1,846 respondents from 2 individualistic (United States, Australia) and 2 collectivistic (China, Taiwan) countries. A multigroup latent class analysis revealed that there were both universal and culture-specific types of norms for experiencing emotions. Moreover, strong intranational variability in norms for affect could be detected, particularly for collectivistic nations. Unexpectedly, individualistic nations were most uniform in norms, particularly with regard to pleasant affect. Individualistic and collectivistic nations differed most strongly in norms for self-reflective emotions (e.g., pride and guilt). Norms for emotions were related to emotional experiences within nations. Furthermore, there were strong national differences in reported emotional experiences, even when norms were held constant.
A detailed account of more than a year's close study of the African gorilla. It "describes, tabulates, analyzes, and evaluates every aspect of a gorilla's life: its habits of eating, nesting, mating, playing; its methods of communication; and its expressions of emotion, such as the chest-beating display. There are sections on population dynamics, including mortality factors, on group dynamics, and on the gorilla's response to weather, to other animals, and to man." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Naturalistic observation at a bowling alley (N = 1,793 balls) shows that bowlers often smiled when socially engaged, looking at and talking to others, but not necessarily after scoring a spare or a strike. In a 2nd study, bowlers (N = 166 balls) rarely smiled while facing the pins but often smiled when facing their friends. At a hockey game, fans (N = 3,726 faces) smiled both when they were socially involved and after events favorable to their team. Pedestrians (N = 663) were much more likely to smile when talking but only slightly more likely to smile in response to nice weather than to unpleasant weather. These 4 studies suggest a strong and robust association of smiling with a social motivation and an erratic association with emotional experience. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
The question whether body movements and body postures are indicative of specific emotions is a matter of debate. While some studies have found evidence for specific body movements accompanying specific emotions, others indicate that movement behavior (aside from facial expression) may be only indicative of the quantity (intensity) of emotion, but not of its quality. The study reported here is an attempt to demonstrate that body movements and postures to some degree are specific for certain emotions. A sample of 224 video takes, in which actors and actresses portrayed the emotions of elated joy, happiness, sadness, despair, fear, terror, cold anger, hot anger, disgust, contempt, shame, guilt, pride, and boredom via a scenario approach, was analyzed using coding schemata for the analysis of body movements and postures. Results indicate that some emotion-specific movement and posture characteristics seem to exist, but that for body movements differences between emotions can be partly explained by the dimension of activation. While encoder (actor) differences are rather pronounced with respect to specific movement and posture habits, these differences are largely independent from the emotion-specific differences found. The results are discussed with respect to emotion-specific discrete expression models in contrast to dimensional models of emotion encoding.
Following proposals regarding the criteria for differentiating emotions, the current investigation examined whether the antecedents and facial expressions of embarrassment, shame, and guilt are distinct. In Study 1, participants wrote down events that had caused them to feel embarrassment, shame, and guilt. Coding of these events revealed that embarrassment was associated with transgressions of conventions that govern public interactions, shame with the failure to meet important personal standards, and guilt with actions that harm others or violate duties. Study 2 determined whether these three emotions are distinct in another domain of emotion-namely, facial expression. Observers were presented with slides of 14 different facial expressions, including those of embarrassment, shame, and candidates of guilt (self-contempt, sympathy, and pain). Observers accurately identified the expressions of embarrassment and shame, but did not reliably label any expression as guilt.
Abstract Human faces and bodies are both complex and interesting perceptual objects, and both convey important social information. Given these similarities between faces and bodies, we can ask how similar are the visual processing mechanisms used to recognize them. It has long been argued that faces are subject to dedicated and unique perceptual processes, but until recently, relatively little research has focused on how we perceive the human body. Some recent paradigms indicate that faces and bodies are processed differently; others show similarities in face and body perception. These similarities and differences depend on the type of perceptual task and the level of processing involved. Future research should take these issues into account.
The twentieth century gave rise to profound changes in traditional sex roles. This study reveals how modernization has changed cultural attitudes towards gender equality and analyzes the political consequences. It systematically compares attitudes towards gender equality worldwide, comparing almost 70 nations, ranging from rich to poor, agrarian to postindustrial. This volume is essential reading to gain a better understanding of issues in comparative politics, public opinion, political behavior, development and sociology. © Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris 2003 and Cambridge University Press, 2009.
We used multiple methods to examine two questions about emotion and culture: (1) Which facial expressions are recognised cross-culturally; and (2) does the “forced-choice” method lead to spurious findings of universality? Forty participants in the US and 40 in India were shown 14 facial expressions and asked to say what had happened to cause the person to make the face. Analyses of the social situations given and of the affect words spontaneously used showed high levels of recognition for most of the expressions. A subsequent forced-choice task using the same faces confirmed these findings. Analysis of the pattern of magnitude, discreteness, and similarity of responses across cultures and expressions led to the conclusion that there is no neat distinction between cross-culturally recognisable and nonrecognisable expressions. Results are better described as a gradient of recognition.
In this article we examine the role of appeasement in human emotion, social practice, and personality. We first present an analysis of human appeasement. Appeasement begins when the conditions of social relations lead one individual to anticipate aggression from others, is expressed in submissive, inhibited behavior, which in turn evokes inferences and emotions in others that bring about social reconciliation. Our empirical review focuses on two classes of human appeasement: reactive forms of appeasement, including embar- rassment and shame, which placate others after social transgressions; and anticipatory forms of appeasement, including polite modesty and shyness, which reduce the likeli- hood of social conflict and aggression. Our review of the empirical evidence indi- cates that embarrassment, shame, modesty, and shyness share the eliciting conditions, submissive behavior, and social consequences of appeasement. We conclude by discussing social processes that allow humans to appease one another, such as teasing, and those that prevent appeasement, such as legal and negotiation prac- tices, to the benefit and detriment of human relations. Aggr. Behav. 23:359-374, 1997. © 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
This article proposes a unitary explanation of social control for normal and rigid conformity. Conformity may arise from the interaction of deference with normal pride and shame; rigid conformity from chain reactions of shame. I show that Darwin, Cooley, and others suggested the same context for pride and shame: self's perception of the evaluation of self by other(s). Their work, which assumes a continuous social monitoring of the self from the standpoint of others, suggests a puzzle: If social monitoring is continuous and causes either pride or shame, why are so few manifestations of either emotion visible in our lives? One possible explanation is that pride and shame usually have very low visibility. I call this the Cooley-Scheff conjecture. Goffman's work on "face" implies this conjecture and Lewis's discovery of unacknowledged shame confirms it. Her analysis of hundreds of clinical interviews demonstrates that low-visibility shame was present in every session, though neither therapist nor patient seemed to be aware of it. Drawing on Lewis's exact description of the markers of various manifestations of shame and Goffman's analysis of the relation between deference and embarrassment, a deference-emotion system is described. Members perceive this system as compelling conformity to norms exterior to self by informal but pervasive rewards (outer deference and its reciprocal, inner pride) and punishments (lack of deference, and the inner shame that is its reciprocal). I show how Asch's study of conformity and independence illustrates the role of shame in compelling conformity to exterior norms.
Kraut and Johnston (1979) found surprisingly few smiles in large samples of bowlers and hockey fans during happy events--unless they were simultaneously engaged in social interaction. A limitation of their studies is that there was no direct test of subjects' actual emotional experience at the moments in which they were observed. This article reports two field studies in which emotions were reported by bowlers and by soccer fans. Analysing facial behaviour of those who reported happiness, we found a low probability of smiling in the absence of social interaction (.09 for bowlers and .07 for soccer fans) and a high probability of smiling during social interaction (.78 and .70). These findings question the common assumption that smiles are an indicator of happiness per se, and support the alternative hypothesis of a more complex and indirect relationship between smiling and happiness.
Emotional facial expressions of 10 congenitally blind and 10 sighted children, aged between 8 and 11, were compared. Facial movements were filmed in seven daily life emotional situations and then coded by an objective coding system (Facial Action Coding System--FACS). Facial expressions of blind and sighted children were rather similar. Interestingly, complete expression patterns of basic emotions were relatively rare in both groups, with the exception of joy. Despite the similarities between the two groups, some differences also emerged. The frequency of certain facial movements is higher in the blind than in the sighted children. Social influences are evident only in the expressions of sighted children who often hide negative emotions (anger and fear). Overall, results suggest that there are no substantial differences of facial expression of emotions between the two groups, even if the facial movements of blind children are less influenced by cultural rules. Theoretical and practical implications of these results will be discussed.
Much theory and research on emotion are based on the facial expressions of amateurs asked to pose for still photographs. The theory of facial affect programs (FAPs; P. Ekman, 1972) was proposed to account for the resulting expressions, most of which are
patterns consisting of distinguishable parts. In the present study, 4 Hollywood films noted for fine acting and realism were examined for the facial expressions that accompany a basic emotion. In keeping with the theory of FAPs, professional actors judged as happy were found smiling in 97% (Duchenne smiling in 74%) of cases. In contrast, actors judged as surprised, afraid, angry, disgusted, or sad rarely showed the predicted pattern (found in 0–31% of cases). Typically, they used 1 or 2 parts from the full pattern. If these films represent real life, these findings favor a theory that assumes separable parts (e.g., components theory) over the older theory of FAPs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Observations on dominance behavior were made on about 35 infra-human primates of all kinds, ranging from platyrrhine monkeys to chimpanzees. The behavior syndrome of the dominant animal is described, and also that of the subordinate animal. The relations of "dominance behavior" to such factors as age, size, sex, and the existing hierarchy in the group are discussed. The author believes that the importance of dominance as a determiner of social and sexual behavior in the monkey has not been sufficiently recognized. Bibliography. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
According to appeasement hypotheses, embarrassment should have a distinct nonverbal display that is more readily perceived when displayed by individuals from lower status groups. The evidence from 5 studies supported these two claims. The nonverbal behavior of embarrassment was distinct from a related emotion (amusement), resembled the temporal pattern of facial expressions of emotion, was uniquely related to self-reports of embarrassment, and was accurately identified by observers who judged the spontaneous displays of various emotions. Across the judgment studies, observers were more accurate and attributed more emotion to the embarrassment displays of female and African-American targets than those of male and Caucasian targets. Discussion focused on the universality and appeasement function of the embarrassment display. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
All facial behavior displayed by 22 Olympic gold medalists during their awards ceremonies was codified. The awards ceremony contains one stage in which the medalist interacts with others and two noninteractive stages. Observers (including 10 other gold medalists) judged the emotional experience of the gold medalists to be intense happiness throughout the ceremony. However, smiles were frequent only during the interactive stage. As predicted by behavioral ecological theories of facial behavior, happiness was not sufficient for smiling. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Compared expressions of pride and mastery in 90 preschool children who were autistic (mean age 42.40 mo), mentally retarded (mean age 41.67 mo), and normal (mean age 19.83 mo). A paradigm was used in which Ss completed developmentally appropriate puzzles with and without praise. Compared to the other Ss as many autistic Ss smiled on completion of the task, but many fewer looked up to share their pleasure with the parent or experimenter or drew attention to the task. Significantly more autistic Ss showed avoidant responses, particularly in response to praise. (Japanese abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change Around the World - - Volume 2 Issue 2 - Peggy Kahn
The Second Edition of this classic work, first published in 1981 and an international bestseller, explores the differences in thinking and social action that exist among members of more than 50 modern nations. Geert Hofstede argues that people carry "mental programs" which are developed in the family in early childhood and reinforced in schools and organizations, and that these programs contain components of national culture. They are expressed most clearly in the different values that predominate among people from different countries. Geert Hofstede has completely rewritten, revised and updated Cultures Consequences for the twenty-first century, he has broadened the book's cross-disciplinary appeal, expanded the coverage of countries examined from 40 to more than 50, reformulated his arguments and a large amount of new literature has been included. The book is structured around five major dimensions: power distance; uncertainty avoidance; individualism versus collectivism; masculinity versus femininity; and long term versus short-term orientation. --Publisher.
The question whether body movements and body postures are indicative of speci®c emotions is a matter of debate. While some studies have found evidence for speci®c body movements accompanying speci®c emotions, others indicate that movement behavior (aside from facial expression) may be only indicative of the quantity (intensity) of emotion, but not of its quality. The study reported here is an attempt to demonstrate that body movements and postures to some degree are speci®c for certain emotions. A sample of 224 video takes, in which actors and actresses portrayed the emotions of elated joy, happiness, sadness, despair, fear, terror, cold anger, hot anger, disgust, contempt, shame, guilt, pride, and boredom via a scenario approach, was analyzed using coding schemata for the analysis of body movements and postures. Results indicate that some emotion-speci®c movement and posture characteristics seem to exist, but that for body movements dierences between emotions can be partly explained by the dimension of activation. While encoder (actor) dierences are rather pronounced with respect to speci®c movement and posture habits, these dierences are largely independent from the emotion-speci®c dierences found. The results are discussed with respect to emotion-speci®c discrete expression models in contrast to dimensional models of emotion encoding. # 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
To examine individual differences in pride and shame reactions of 3-year-olds and their temperamental and parenting antecedents, 110 boys were studied at ages 36 and 37 months in a “rigged” achievement situation. After being trained to complete explicitly stipulated “easy” and “difficult” tasks before a buzzer sounded, success and failure were manipulated by artificially “rigging” how much time the child had to work on these tasks. Children's facial, verbal, and postural reactions to success and failure were composited to create pride scores following success and shame scores following failure. As expected, pride reactions were greater following success on the difficult than on the easy task, and shame reactions were greater following failure on the easy than on the difficult task. Early temperament (at 12/13 months) proved unrelated to pride and shame. With respect to parenting, measurements composited across 15, 21, 27, and 33 months showed that mothers and fathers who were more positive in their parenting had children who displayed less pride, and that children whose parents (especially mothers) were more negative in their parenting evinced less shame. These counterintuitive findings are discussed in terms of differences between assessments of parenting obtained in this investigation of parenting antecedents and those obtained in other studies of parental responses in the achievement situation itself. Directions for future research are outlined.
Darwin and others have perceived parallels between the erect bearing of proud, successful humans and the expansive demeanor of dominant animals. Various additional parallels between man and other primates in the characteristics of dominance hierarchies, the facial and postural expression of dominance, and its possible neural mediation are described. In the present study, success by human subjects in various situations was found to be reflected by erect posture. In a longitudinal study, boys who had been ranked by peers as tough, or dominant in agonistic encounters, in early grade school were observed to have erect posture in high school. Further, high school students who were judged by peers as successful by group standards tended to have erect posture. Finally, erectness of posture was related to performance on a college examination, with students'' posture changing in erectness upon their receiving their grade. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that human competition for social success is based upon a biological capacity for dominance hierarchization.
Within- and between-nations differences in norms for experiencing emotions were analyzed in a cross-cultural study with 1,846
respondents from 2 individualistic (United States, Australia) and 2 collectivistic (China, Taiwan) countries. A multigroup
latent class analysis revealed that there were both universal and culture-specific types of norms for experiencing emotions.
Moreover, strong intranational variability in norms for affect could be detected, particularly for collectivistic nations.
Unexpectedly, individualistic nations were most uniform in norms, particularly with regard to pleasant affect. Individualistic
and collectivistic nations differed most strongly in norms for self-reflective emotions (e.g., pride and guilt). Norms for
emotions were related to emotional experiences within nations. Furthermore, there were strong national differences in reported
emotional experiences, even when norms were held constant.
A series of studies was conducted to examine the development of self-evaluation in children aged 1-5 years. Developmental changes in children's reactions to achievement-related outcomes were assessed in a variety of contexts, using different tasks and different criteria for success. The first study of 1-3-year-olds revealed an increased social orientation after the age of 21 months. Only children over this age were more likely to look up at the experimenter after they had produced an outcome themselves than after the same outcome had been produced by the experimenter. These older children were also more likely than younger children to call their mothers' attention to their achievements in a free-play situation. In a second study, on a task with visibly salient success versus failure outcomes, children aged 2-5 years responded to success with positive affect (e.g., smiling) and to failure with avoidance reactions (e.g., looking away from the experimenter). Praise enhanced children's positive affective reactions to success, but its effect was modest. In the final study, winning or losing on a competitive task was not understood by children below age 33 months and had no effect on their affective reactions to the task. In contrast, winning enhanced older children's pleasure in completing the task. Three stages are proposed in the development of self-evaluation. In the first stage, children experience joy in causality, but they lack the cognitive representational skills required for self-evaluation in a self-reflective sense, and they do not anticipate others' reactions to their performance. In the second stage, beginning before the age of 2 years, children anticipate adult reactions, seeking positive reactions to their successes and endeavoring to avoid negative reactions to failure. The proposed third stage involves a gradual internalization of external reactions, with children beginning to evaluate their performance and react emotionally to success and failure independently of their expectations of adult reactions. Although all studies focused on achievement outcomes, the development of self-evaluation in the moral domain may parallel this developmental sequence proposed for the achievement domain. It is also proposed that caretakers' reactions to rule violations might engender concerns about meeting adult expectations in achievement contexts.
3-year-old children were presented with easy and difficult tasks and their emotional responses of shame and pride were observed. No shame was shown when subjects succeeded on the tasks and no pride was shown when they failed. Significantly more shame was shown when subjects failed easy tasks than when they failed difficult tasks, and significantly more pride was shown when subjects succeeded on difficult than on easy tasks. While there were no sex differences in task failures, girls showed more shame than boys. There were no sex differences in pride when subjects succeeded.
The effect of blindness on the spontaneous expressive control of negative emotion was examined in a study comparing 12 congenitally blind children with 12 sighted children who were matched by age, sex, and school. Blind children engaged in as much positive facial display as sighted children when receiving a disappointing prize, although they were less likely to refer spontaneously to their expressive control in explaining whether the examiner knew of their disappointment. Blind children were more likely to engage in neutral remarks when receiving the disappointing prize, and older blind children referred to verbal control of emotion communication. The data suggest that blindness does not preclude the spontaneous expressive control of negative emotion.
Emotions are universally recognized from facial expressions--or so it has been claimed. To support that claim, research has been carried out in various modern cultures and in cultures relatively isolated from Western influence. A review of the methods used in that research raises questions of its ecological, convergent, and internal validity. Forced-choice response format, within-subject design, preselected photographs of posed facial expressions, and other features of method are each problematic. When they are altered, less supportive or nonsupportive results occur. When they are combined, these method factors may help to shape the results. Facial expressions and emotion labels are probably associated, but the association may vary with culture and is loose enough to be consistent with various alternative accounts, 8 of which are discussed.
The goal of this study was to compare expressions of pride and mastery in samples of preschool autistic, mentally retarded and normal children. A paradigm was used in which children completed developmentally appropriate puzzles, both with and without praise. Results indicated that compared to the other children, as many autistic children smiled upon completion of the task, but many fewer looked up to share their pleasure with the parent or experimenter or drew attention to the task. Moreover, significantly more autistic children showed avoidant responses, particularly in response to praise. These findings are discussed in terms of theoretical issues regarding the development of pride and mastery in children with significant social deficiencies.
Toddlers displaying extremely inhibited behavior may be at risk for becoming socially withdrawn. However, behavioral inhibition may be a multifaceted characteristic, and its concurrent relation to toddler wariness with peers has not been examined. In this study, 108 toddlers (54 females) and their mothers were observed in novel situations involving unfamiliar settings, adults, and peers. Vagal tone, temperament, separation-reunion behavior, and maternal oversolicitousness also were assessed. There was little consistency of inhibited behavior across the 3 situations. Consistently inhibited toddlers had fearful temperaments, showed distress following maternal separation, and had mothers who were warm and controlling but unresponsive to children's cues during interaction. Toddlers with highly fearful temperaments and highly oversolicitous mothers were the most inhibited across contexts.
To examine individual differences in pride and shame reactions of 3-year-olds and their temperamental and parenting antecedents, 110 boys were studied at ages 36 and 37 months in a "rigged" achievement situation. After being trained to complete explicitly stipulated "easy" and "difficult" tasks before a buzzer sounded, success and failure were manipulated by artificially "rigging" how much time the child had to work on these tasks. Children's facial, verbal, and postural reactions to success and failure were composited to create pride scores following success and shame scores following failure. As expected, pride reactions were greater following success on the difficult than on the easy task, and shame reactions were greater following failure on the easy than on the difficult task. Early temperament (at 12/13 months) proved unrelated to pride and shame. With respect to parenting, measurements composited across 15, 21, 27, and 33 months showed that mothers and fathers who were more positive in their parenting had children who displayed less pride, and that children whose parents (especially mothers) were more negative in their parenting evinced less shame. These counterintuitive findings are discussed in terms of differences between assessments of parenting obtained in this investigation of parenting antecedents and those obtained in other studies of parental responses in the achievement situation itself. Directions for future research are outlined.
The authors address 2 questions about embarrassment. First, Is embarrassment a distinct emotion? The evidence indicates that the antecedents, experience, and display of embarrassment, and to a limited extent its autonomic physiology, are distinct from shame, guilt, and amusement and share the dynamic, temporal characteristics of emotion. Second, What are the theoretical accounts of embarrassment? Three accounts focus on the causes of embarrassment, positioning that it follows the loss of self-esteem, concern for others' evaluations, or absence of scripts to guide interactions. A fourth account focuses on the effects of the remedial actions of embarrassment, which correct preceding transgressions. A fifth account focuses on the functional parallels between embarrassment and nonhuman appeasement. The discussion focuses on unanswered questions about embarrassment.