8 May 00
early encoding experiments � could reflect american cultural conventions (already eben assimilated to western culture before the exerpimetn)
Decoding study
Ekman � tiny New Guinea mountain-dwelling people (the Foray), took part in psychological experiment
had to change the emthod � show the pictures, attach labels
instead, describe a story (your child has just died, and you#�re rather sad), and which picture matches it
the foray, looking at pictures of americans were pretty good
Encoding study
put on the kind of face appropriate to this situation, videotaped, then asked the american graduate students to decode (12 bits of video tape)
ranged from 73% (happiness, sadness, anger) to 18% success (fear, surprise) rate
review of Ekman�s evidence, raised questions about its value
suggested problems with the evidence from cross-cultures, and drawing conculsiosn from it
the task is influenced by the context (e.g. what other faces you�re being asked to judge against), faces are very different from each other, might be presented all the photographs at once to compare
the same subjects were involved in the whole experiments
pre-selection of stimuli � threw away (perhaps 1000s of possibly non-representative) photographs that were contentious, ended up with sets of photographs that worked
the photos were all posed, whereas Ekman�s theory was about spontaneous facial expressions (are they necessarily the same? maybe), e.g. the eyebrow flash on seeing someone (lasts <1/6 second) looks laboured if done deliberately � but we�re implicitly aware of seeing it
Questions about evidence on recognition of emotion from
facial expression (Russell, 1994)
o recognition of task influenced by context
o comparative judgement helps but lacks ecological validty
o weakness of within-subject designs
o preselection of stimuli
o posed versus spontaeous expression
o forced choice responses
o degree of control over tests administration
need to find a translator for the Foray people who understands scientific experiment technique (may have deliberately/implicitly given the answer away)
Sorenson: was on Ekman�s expedition: noticed that they had an unusual attitude to communication, expected to be provided with information and helped
o general ecological validity of recognition tasks
showed people slides of posed then actual spontaneous slides � asked participants to label what they�d seen
recognition under these conditions was much poorer (<46% for happiness � 13% for anger) � some were no better than chance. this could be because the spontaneous emotional reactions were only mild (ethics of really scaring/angering the participants etc.) so may not have been very visible
need to present people with fixed choices, otherwise the results won�t be comparable
maybe it�s a different kind of task to evaluate the feelings of people we don�t know (as opposed to the people we�re in contact with every day)
FAST � facial affect scoring technique
people couldn�t judge what isolated parts of the face
FACS � facial action(?) coding system
number of different positions of areas of the face in cropped slowed-down video clips
very very time-consuming and requires expensive training course
intensifying (blubbing uncontrolleably at an African funeral even if you don�t care)
de-intensifying (British sniffing at a funeral)
neutralising (Chinese children taught not to smile, definitely not show teeth)
masking (show different feeling, Japanese children taught to smile whatever)
in the presence of other people, use display rules
alone, should be spontaneous emotional response
sinus operation � physiological signs, videoed the audience�s reactions
americans � yuck, urgh
japanese � politely thanked for allowing to be part of experiment
not 2, but 3 conditions
� solitary viewing
� being interviewed after viewing
� viewing again while being interviewed
both japanese/americans had similar reactions for the first two, but much more positive and less negative than the americans for the 3rd category � this could just be because they were more polite and were looking at the interviewer rather than the film going in the background
display rules = plausible + sensible idea
that there are conventions re what feelings to reveal under circumstances, and that cultures differ
but there is very little systematic evidence
let alone: how do we learn them, individual differences etc.
most
controllable
what we say (verbal channel) = most consciously controlled (incl false/untrue)
facial expression
body � hands � legs � feet
vocal quality
most leaky
student nurses: supposed to maintain cheerful demeanour under grotesque conditions
filmed them � both neck upwards/downwards
more leakage from the body � easier to tell deceptive than facial
what if conflicting information between the different channels
Argyle - compared the verbal/non-verbal friendly/hostile channels
people believe the non-verbal (under special circumstances, non-verbal is seen as more reliable)
Ekman (�Telling Lies�) � when people are very relaxed about lying, you can hardly tell from their non-verbal � it�s only when people are uncomfortable about lying � use inconsistencies in their story)
smiling at the bowling alley
assume people will feel spontaneous pleasure at a strike
2 cameras � expression looking at the pins vs looking back to their companions
smiling in the street
???
Ekman�s 2 factor model
soli
|
Solitary |
In company |
|
authentic read out of inner feelings |
managed display |
|
Fridlund�s social communications/behavioural ecology model |
|
|
little or no reaction |
smile to communicate |
Ekman � show truer feelings alone
Fridlund = for social communication/behavioural ecology, so no expression alone
when there�s nobody present, there�s no facial expression (it�s an intended communication to an audience)
is it meaningful to distinguish between posed/spontaneous facial expressions
basic questions in social life = prediction + influence
have to figure out why that environment (other people) are behaving as they are (what is the cause of that response/effect?)
na� analysis of action � we�re all trying to figure out from what we can observe what is unobservable (others� desires/intentions)
observe an event � attribute that to something about the actor (relevant to predicting/learning abnout that person)
or is it something about the situation
and decide whether it�s a stable/unstable cause
co-variation model
look for covariation of potential causes/effects � look to see what possible causes are always present/absent, and deduce what the cause probably is
Roxanne rejects Cyrano
is it me, the circumstances today, or her
look at evidence from others: others, consistency, distinctiveness
lead you to decide whether it�s something about the actor/situation etc. which is stable/unstable
Jean McArthur
varied patterns, John and the comedian
people do make the attributions predicted
this may not be wired into our brains as the way we work