Recent application of theories of embodied or grounded cognition to the recognition and interpretation of facial expression of emotion has led to an explosion of research in psychology and the neurosciences. However, despite the accelerating number of reported findings, it remains unclear how the many component processes of emotion and their neural mechanisms actually support embodied simulation. Equally unclear is what triggers the use of embodied simulation versus perceptual or conceptual strategies in determining meaning. The present article integrates behavioral research (...) from social psychology with recent research in neurosciences in order to provide coherence to the extant and future research on this topic. The roles of several of the brain's reward systems, and the amygdala, somatosensory cortices, and motor centers are examined. These are then linked to behavioral and brain research on facial mimicry and eye gaze. Articulation of the mediators and moderators of facial mimicry and gaze are particularly useful in guiding interpretation of relevant findings from neurosciences. Finally, a model of the processing of the smile, the most complex of the facial expressions, is presented as a means to illustrate how to advance the application of theories of embodied cognition in the study of facial expression of emotion. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the origins of social understanding. Drawing upon philosophical writings, I highlight those features of affectively patterned interpersonal relations that are especially important for a very young child's growing awareness and knowledge of itself and other people as people with their own minds. If we were without our biologically based capacities for co-ordinated emotional relatedness with others, we should lack something essential for acquiring the concept of 'persons' who have subjective experiences and (...) psychological attitudes towards the world. I illustrate some implications of this thesis by reviewing the phenomena of early childhood autism. (shrink)

Glenberg's account falls short in several respects. Besides requiring clearer explication of basic concepts, his account fails to recognize the autonomous nature of perception. His account of what is remembered, and its description, is too static. His strictures against connectionist modeling might be overcome by combining the notions of psychological space and principled learning in an embodied and situated network.

The finding that women are attracted to men older than themselves whereas men are attracted to relatively younger women has been explained by social psychologists in terms of economic exchange rooted in traditional sex-role norms. An alternative evolutionary model suggests that males and females follow different reproductive strategies, and predicts a more complex relationship between gender and age preferences. In particular, males' preferences for relatively younger females should be minimal during early mating years, but should become more pronounced as the (...) male gets older. Young females are expected to prefer somewhat older males during their early years and to change less as they age. We briefly review relevant theory and present results of six studies testing this prediction. Study 1 finds support for this gender-differentiated prediction in age preferences expressed in personal advertisements. Study 2 supports the prediction with marriage statistics from two U.S. cities. Study 3 examines the cross-generational robustness of the phenomenon, and finds the same pattern in marriage statistics from 1923. Study 4 replicates Study 1 using matrimonial advertisements from two European countries, and from India. Study 5 finds a consistent pattern in marriages recorded from 1913 through 1939 on a small island in the Philippines. Study 6 reveals the same pattern in singles advertisements placed by financially successful American women and men. We consider the limitations of previous normative and evolutionary explanations of age preferences and discuss the advantages of expanding previous models to include the life history perspective. (shrink)

Niedenthal et al's classification of smiles erroneously conflates psychological mechanisms and adaptive functions. This confusion weakens the rationale behind the types of smiles they chose to individuate, and it obfuscates the distinction between the communicative versus denotative nature of smiles and the role of perceived-gaze direction in emotion recognition.

What do we gain from the scientific study of religion? One possibility is that religious contexts are unique, and cognition within these contexts is worth understanding. Another possibility is that religion can be viewed as a laboratory for understanding psychology and culture more broadly. Rather than limiting the study of religion to a single context, I argue that the study of religion is useful precisely because it illuminates secular psychological and cultural processes. I first outline my practical approach to psychology (...) and religion, focusing on how people use religion to advance mundane goals. I then discuss several domains in which studying religion has led to important insights, including culture, prejudice, and cognition. This article is an extended version of an Early Career Award address given at the International Association for the Psychology of Religion meeting in 2023 in Groningen, Netherlands. (shrink)

The ability to recognise others’ emotions from nonverbal cues is measured with performance-based tests and has many positive correlates. Although researchers have...

ABSTRACTDynamic changes in emotional expressions are a valuable source of information in social interactions. As the expressive behaviour of a person changes, the inferences drawn from the behaviour may also change. Here, we test the possibility that dynamic changes in emotional expressions affect person perception in terms of stable trait attributions. Across three experiments, we examined perceivers’ inferences about others’ personality traits from changing emotional expressions. Expressions changed from one emotion to another emotion, allowing us to disentangle potential primacy, recency, (...) and averaging effects. Drawing on three influential models of person perception, we examined perceptions of dominance and affiliation, competence and warmth, and dominance and trustworthiness. A strong recency effect was consistently found across all trait judgments, that is, the end emotion of dynamic expressions had a strong impact on t... (shrink)

Understanding the very nature of the smile with an integrative approach and a novel model is a fertile ground for a new theoretical vision and insights. However, from this perspective, I challenge the authors to integrate culture and race in their model, because both factors would impact upon the embodying and decoding of facial expressions.

The face is a powerful source to make inferences about one’s trustworthiness. Recent studies demonstrated that facial trustworthiness is influenced by the level of threat conveyed by the visual scene in which faces are embedded: untrustworthy-looking faces are more likely judged as untrustworthy when shown in threatening scenes. Here, we explore whether this face-context congruency effect is specific to the negative pole of the threat-trust domain. Experiment 1 (N = 89) focused on the differential impact of positive vs. negative face-context (...) congruency within the domains of threat and trust. Negative congruency (i.e. untrustworthy-looking faces in threatening contexts) led to more extreme attributions as opposed to positive congruency (i.e. trustworthy-looking faces in reassuring contexts). Experiment 2 (N = 120) replicated these findings by further showing their domain-specificity. The negativity bias was found in the threat-trust domain, but not when extroverted- vs. introverted-looking faces appeared in happy vs. sad context scenes. Experiment 3 (N = 154, pre-registered) replicated the pattern observed in Experiment 1 while controlling for the extent to which both threatening and reassuring context stimuli were related to the human action. We discussed the theoretical implications of these results for understanding how contextual information is integrated into the evaluation of facial trustworthiness. (shrink)