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Emotional Resemblance: Perception of Facial Emotion in Written English
Max Weisbuch, Jeremy R. Reynolds, Sarah Lamer,
and Masako Kikuchi
University of Denver
Toko Kiyonari
Aoyama Gakuin University
Written language is comprised of simple line configurations (i.e., letters) that, in theory, elicit affect by
virtue of the concepts they symbolize, rather than their physical features. However, we propose that the
line configurations that comprise letters vary in their visual resemblance to canonical features of facial
emotion and, through such emotional resemblance, influence affective responses to written language. We
first describe our data-driven approach to indexing emotional resemblance in each letter according to its
visual signature. This approach includes cross-cultural validation and neural-network modeling. Based on
the resulting weights, we examine the extent to which emotional resemblance in Latin letters is
incidentally processed in a flanker paradigm (Study 1), shapes unintentional affective responses to letters
(Study 2), accounts for affective responses to orthographically controlled letter strings (Study 3), and
shapes affective responses to real English words (Study 4). Results were supportive of hypotheses. We
discuss mechanisms, limitations, and implications.
Keywords: social vision, facial expressions, emotion, visual word perception
Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000623.supp
Written language can be emotionally powerful, and this emotional
influence is typically attributed to the conceptual meaning of words,
rather their visual appearance. For example, attitude researchers often
assume that concepts like ⬍LOVE⬎or ⬍MUSLIM⬎drive affective
responses to words such as “love” and “Muslim.” Yet written words
are visual stimuli and, like other such stimuli, might generate affect by
virtue of their visual signatures, independent of their conceptual
meanings. For example, geometric shapes and household products
that visually resemble angry faces are evaluated negatively (Aggarwal
& McGill, 2007;Ichikawa, Kanazawa, & Yamaguchi, 2011;
Landwehr, McGill, & Herrmann, 2011;Watson, Blagrove, Evans, &
Moore, 2012;Windhager et al., 2008) and curvy objects are evaluated
positively (Bar & Neta, 2006). Such effects are rooted in the visual
signature of these objects (e.g., ⵜ), rather than their conceptual iden-
tity (e.g., ⬍TRIANGLE⬎; e.g., Watson et al., 2012). The visual
signature of any written word may likewise generate affect indepen-
dent of the concept referenced by that visual signature. We propose
that visual signatures of Latin letters resemble affectively meaningful
objects and through such emotional resemblance, quickly shape read-
ers’ affective responses to written words. More broadly, we hypoth-
esize that affective processes are sensitive to the pictorial meaning of
written language.
A Historical Perspective on Pictures and Text in
Visual Communication
Ancient history and modern methods of communication both sup-
port the idea that people are sensitive to pictorial meaning in written
language. People have always used pictorial imagery to communicate:
The earliest records of pictorial imagery coincide with the earliest
records of the human species. More recently, ancient Egyptians and
Mesoamericans shared the intuition to use pictorial imagery to sys-
tematically communicate symbolic thought. In fact, modern alpha-
betic letters, including the Latin letters on this page, can be traced
from (1) ancient hieroglyphics through (2a) heriatics and (2b) proto-
sinaitic to (3) phoenician and finally, to (4) the letters you see in front
of you (cf. Fischer, 2001;Gelb, 1963;Trigger, 1998). For example, it
is thought that the Latin letter mcan be traced to the hieroglyph
for “water” or “wave” (Pflughaupt, 2007;Sacks, 2003).
Indeed, most writing systems across the world and over time appear
to have been preceded by visual communication systems in which
people write and read via pictures (Fischer, 2001,2003).
We propose that human sensitivity to pictorial meaning during
reading was not lost with the ancient Egyptians but instead persists
in the visual perception of modern writing. Specifically, we sus-
pect that affective processes may be especially sensitive to picto-
rial meaning in words. Indeed, affective processes are exception-
ally sensitive to visual input such that people have lightning-fast
affective responses to pictorial stimuli (Calvo & Nummenmaa,
2007;Codispoti, Bradley, & Lang, 2001;Dimberg, Thunberg, &
Elmehed, 2000;Murphy & Zajonc, 1993;Weisbuch & Ambady,
2008). These processes are effortless (Fenske & Eastwood, 2003;
Horstmann, Borgstedt, & Heumann, 2006;McAndrew, 1986;
Maratos, Mogg, & Bradley, 2008) and appear fast enough to occur
ahead of the speedy process of word identification (Yap, Balota,
This article was published Online First July 1, 2019.
XMax Weisbuch, Jeremy R. Reynolds, XSarah Lamer, XMasako
Kikuchi, Department of Psychology, University of Denver; Toko Kiyonari,
School of Social Informatics, Aoyama Gakuin University.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Max
Weisbuch, Department of Psychology, University of Denver, 2155 S Race
Street, Denver, CO 80210. E-mail: max.weisbuch@du.edu
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