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Effects of Self-Generated Facial Expressions on Mood

American Psychological Association
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
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Abstract

Two experiments were conducted in which participants looked at photographs (Experiment 1, n = 129) or slides (Experiment 2, n = 90) of people engaging in positive or negative facial expressions. Participants attempted to communicate these facial expressions as accurately as they could to a video camera while viewing themselves in a mirror or without viewing themselves in a mirror. Participants in a control group maintained neutral facial expressions. Participants experienced increased positive moods when they engaged in positive facial expressions and decreased positive moods when they engaged in negative facial expressions. These effects were enhanced when participants viewed themselves in a mirror. The effects of facial expressions on positive affect were stronger for participants with high private self-consciousness. Results were integrated with research identifying individuals who are responsive to self-produced versus situational cues and with theory and research on self-awareness.
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... Ein alternativer Mechanismus könnte sein, dass die unterschiedlichen Gesichtsausdrücke zu einer Veränderung der Bluttemperatur im Kopf führen, was von Zajonc et al. (1989) als mögliche Ursache für eine Veränderung des subjektiven Wohlbefindens gewertet wird. Kleinke et al. (1998) ...
... Ohne sich sehen zu können, gab es keine vergleichbare Korrelation. Das passt auch zu den Ergebnissen von Kleinke et al. (1998) im Zusammenhang mit der Facial-Feedback-Hypothese, wonach das Sehen des eigenen Spiegelbildes dazu führt, dass die Stimmung noch stärker steigt. Daher sollte bei der ELAπ das Kamerabild auf dem Bildschirm angezeigt werden (siehe Abbildung 3.2). ...
... Schließlich sind viele Menschen es längst gewöhnt, in eine Smartphone-Kamera zu lächeln. Möglich ist ebenso, dass die Vorschau des eigenen Bildes auf dem Bildschirm einen unterstützenden Einfluss hatte, ähnlich wie es Kleinke et al. (1998), ausgelöst durch einen Spiegel, beobachten konnten. Dazu sollten weitere experimentelle Untersuchungen durchgeführt werden, bei denen verschiedene Versionen der ELAπ miteinander verglichen werden. ...
Thesis
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Viele technische Entwicklungen sollen die Produktivität steigern aber vernachlässigen das Wohlbefinden der Nutzerinnen und Nutzer. Dabei macht nach der Facial-Feedback-Hypothese bereits Lächeln glücklich. Auf den Grundlagen des Positive Computing wurde in dieser Arbeit eine Echtzeit-Lächelerkennung als positive Interaktionsform (ELAπ) entwickelt, die das Lächeln einer Person als Eingabemöglichkeit nutzt. Zum Testen dieser wurde eine Demo-Anwendung einer Achtsamkeitsübung für Android und iOS Geräte programmiert, wobei das ML Kit für die Mimikerkennung verwendet wurde. Die App wurde in einem Cross-over Feldexperiment von 51 Versuchspersonen (29 weiblich, 21 männlich, 1 divers; M = 34.35 Jahre, SD = 14.83 Jahre) mindestens acht Tage lang genutzt. Um Achtsamkeit und Wohlbefinden (operationalisiert durch Aktivierung und Freude) zu untersuchen, wurden ein Affective Slider (AS) und der Freiburger Fragebogen zur Achtsamkeit (FFA) verwendet. Im Vergleich zur Interaktion mit einem Button als Kontrollbedingung, zeigte sich durch die ELAπ eine signifikant größere Steigerung der Freude (t (48) = 2.76, p = .008, d = 0.40). Die neue Interaktionsform konnte den entspannenden Effekt der Achtsamkeitsübung nicht verstärken (t (49) = 0.83, p = .411, d = 0.12). Die Versuchspersonen waren nach Verwendung der ELAπ wacher als vor der Interaktion. Bereits acht Atemübungen führten bei den Versuchspersonen in dieser Studie zu einer erhöhten Achtsamkeit (F (2, 96) = 3.53, p = .033, η 2 p = .07). Die hier entwickelte Lösung zeigt, dass ein einfaches Lächeln als Interaktion die Freude erhöht und damit eine Smartphone-Anwendung in eine positive Technologie transformiert werden könnte, die Wohlbefinden fördert. Denkbar wäre zum Beispiel der Einsatz der ELAπ als Alternative zu einem Button, sofern keine zeitkritische Eingabe notwendig ist. Wie die Follow-up Befragung zeigte, schien rund die Hälfte der Versuchspersonen (N = 29) das Lächeln als Interaktionsform in der App gegenüber dem Button zu bevorzugen.
... Emotional contagion is the process by which emotional states are transferred from one organism to another and influenced by various social factors (Hatfield et al., 2014;Wróbel and Imbir, 2019). Emotional contagion in humans often extends beyond empathy, in which emotions are understood by conspecifics in proximity, and falls in the category of a genuine transfer of affect (Kleinke et al., 1998;Wild et al., 2001). This transfer of affect is also thought to be experienced in non-human animals and has been reported in ravens (Adriaense et al., 2019), pigs (Goumon and Š pinka, 2016), parrots (Schwing et al., 2017), and rats (Saito et al., 2016). ...
... Additionally, aversive USV playback shows increases in behavioral avoidance (Demaestri et al., 2019) and changes in indices of physiological arousal (Olszyński et al., 2020). In humans, the Fearful Face Task is a commonly used method to induce affective states in participants that extend beyond empathy (Kleinke et al., 1998;Wild et al., 2001). This task leverages social contagion and the innate, unspoken exchange of emotion conveyed via facial expressions from a sender to evoke similar emotions in a viewer/receiver (Wild et al., 2001). ...
... However, there is a large body of related work about smiles and positive emotions. For example, Kleinke et al. [22] argue that eliciting smiles causes a positive feeling for humans. The smile must not be caused by a feeling, only the muscle movement is enough to evoke a positive emotion. ...
... 43.47% of them stated that they are most likely to look into a mirror if they happen to see one (21 out of 39). 22.92% indicate that they sometimes feel insecure after looking into a mirror (11 out of 38). The participants were asked, which aspect of their appearance they liked most, the most common answers were as follows: eyes (46.67%), hair (16.67%), face (10%) and muscles(10%) (n = 30). ...
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With today's technologies it seems easier than ever to augment everyday things with the ability to perceive their environment and to talk to users. Considering conversational user interfaces, tremendous progress has already been made in designing and evaluating task oriented conversational interfaces, such as voice assistants for ordering food, booking a flight etc. However, it is still very challenging to design smart things that can have with their users an informal conversation and emotional exchange, which requires the smart thing to master the usage of social everyday utterances, using irony and sarcasm, delivering good compliments, etc. In this paper, we focus on the experience design of compliments and the Complimenting Mirror design. The paper reports in detail on three phases of a human-centered design process including a Wizard of Oz study in the lab with 24 participants to explore and identify the effect of different compliment types on user experiences and a consequent field study with 105 users in an architecture museum with a fully functional installation of the Complimenting Mirror. In our analyses we argue why and how a "smart" mirror should compliment users and provide a theorization applicable for affective interaction design with things in more general. We focus on subjective user feedback including user concerns and prepositions of receiving compliments from a thing and on observations of real user behavior in the field i.e. transitions of bodily affective expressions comparing affective user states before, during, and after compliment delivery. Our research shows that compliment design matters significantly and using the right type of compliments in our final design in the field test, we succeed in achieving reactive expressions of positive emotions, "sincere" smiles and laughter, even from the seemingly sternest users.
... Emotional contagion is the process by which emotional states are transferred from one organism to another and influenced by various social factors (Hatfield et al., 2014;Wróbel and Imbir, 2019). Emotional contagion in humans often extends beyond empathy, in which emotions are understood by conspecifics in proximity, and falls in the category of a genuine transfer of affect (Kleinke et al., 1998;Wild et al., 2001). This transfer of affect is also thought to be experienced in non-human animals and has been reported in ravens (Adriaense et al., 2019), pigs (Goumon and Š pinka, 2016), parrots (Schwing et al., 2017), and rats (Saito et al., 2016). ...
... Additionally, aversive USV playback shows increases in behavioral avoidance (Demaestri et al., 2019) and changes in indices of physiological arousal (Olszyński et al., 2020). In humans, the Fearful Face Task is a commonly used method to induce affective states in participants that extend beyond empathy (Kleinke et al., 1998;Wild et al., 2001). This task leverages social contagion and the innate, unspoken exchange of emotion conveyed via facial expressions from a sender to evoke similar emotions in a viewer/receiver (Wild et al., 2001). ...
Preprint
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... To provide an easy-to-follow task that would produce more prototypical facial expressions, we used a facial mimicry paradigm, wherein the participants were asked to mimic images of actors displaying prototypical expressions of happiness 64 . To produce less prototypical facial expressions, some participants completed the voluntary facial action task 65 , wherein they were asked to move some-but not all-facial muscles associated with prototypical expressions of happiness 56 . ...
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Following theories of emotional embodiment, the facial feedback hypothesis suggests that individuals’ subjective experiences of emotion are influenced by their facial expressions. However, evidence for this hypothesis has been mixed. We thus formed a global adversarial collaboration and carried out a preregistered, multicentre study designed to specify and test the conditions that should most reliably produce facial feedback effects. Data from n = 3,878 participants spanning 19 countries indicated that a facial mimicry and voluntary facial action task could both amplify and initiate feelings of happiness. However, evidence of facial feedback effects was less conclusive when facial feedback was manipulated unobtrusively via a pen-in-mouth task.
... The smiling manipulation may thus have activated the corresponding affective system in the participants and consequently resulted in a positive mood, which in turn helps to store congruent information in memory. Previous studies consistently demonstrated that FFM can systematically induce and modulate mood [46][47][48] . Further, some evidence suggests that mood itself can influence memory performance 49,50 . ...
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The perception and storage of facial emotional expressions constitutes an important human skill that is essential for our daily social interactions. While previous research revealed that facial feedback can influence the perception of facial emotional expressions, it is unclear whether facial feedback also plays a role in memory processes of facial emotional expressions. In the present study we investigated the impact of facial feedback on the performance in emotional visual working memory (WM). For this purpose, 37 participants underwent a classical facial feedback manipulation (FFM) (holding a pen with the teeth—inducing a smiling expression vs. holding a pen with the non-dominant hand—as a control condition) while they performed a WM task on varying intensities of happy or sad facial expressions. Results show that the smiling manipulation improved memory performance selectively for happy faces, especially for highly ambiguous facial expressions. Furthermore, we found that in addition to an overall negative bias specifically for happy faces (i.e. happy faces are remembered as more negative than they initially were), FFM induced a positivity bias when memorizing emotional facial information (i.e. faces were remembered as being more positive than they actually were). Finally, our data demonstrate that men were affected more by FFM: during induced smiling men showed a larger positive bias than women did. These data demonstrate that facial feedback not only influences our perception but also systematically alters our memory of facial emotional expressions.
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Publisher Summary Individuals come to “know” their own attitudes, emotions, and other internal states partially by inferring them from observations of their own overt behavior and/ or the circumstances in which this behavior occurs. Thus, to the extent that internal cues are weak, ambiguous, or uninterpretable, the individual is functionally in the same position as an outside observer, an observer who must necessarily rely upon those same external cues to infer the individual's inner states. This chapter traces the conceptual antecedents and empirical consequences of these propositions, attempts to place the theory in a slightly enlarged frame of reference, and clarifies just what phenomena the theory can and cannot account for in the rapidly growing experimental literature of self-attribution phenomena. Several experiments and paradigms from the cognitive dissonance literature are amenable to self-perception interpretations. But precisely because such experiments are subject to alternative interpretations, they cannot be used as unequivocal evidence for self-perception theory. The reinterpretation of cognitive dissonance phenomena and other self-perception phenomena have been discussed. The chapter highlights some differences between self-perception and interpersonal perception and shift of paradigm in social psychology. It discusses some unsolved problems, such as the conceptual status of noncognitive response classes and the strategy of functional analysis.
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This chapter focuses on the theory of objective self-awareness. It presents the theory of objective self-awareness as it stands presently: Conscious attention is viewed as dichotomous, having the property of being directed either toward the self or toward the environment. The direction of attention is guided by events that force attention inward, such as reflections of the self, and events that pull attention outward, such as distracting stimuli outside the self. Under objective self-awareness, the person will experience either negative or positive affect depending on whether attention is directed toward a negative or a positive discrepancy. The chapter illustrates the operation of a principle that is new to the theory. There are three studies relevant to this new proposition—two on self-esteem and one on attribution. Escaping objective self-awareness has been highlighted. The evolved theory of objective self-awareness has ramifications for three conceptual phenomena: (1) The initial reaction to self-focused attention is self-evaluation, which can be either favorable or unfavorable, depending on the nature of the salient within-self discrepancy; (2) The onset of self-focused attention generates attempts to avoid mirrors and similar stimuli, given that salient discrepancies are negative, and in experimentation, attention can be taken from the self through passive diversions as well as through motor activities; (3) If there is no escape from self-focusing stimuli, discrepancy reduction will then follow.