Blended Emotions can be Accurately Recognized from Dynamic Facial and Vocal Expressions

Bibliographic Data

ID21475751
AuthorsAlexandra Israelsson (Stockholm University), Anja Seiger (Stockholm University), Petri Laukka (0000-0001-8771-6818, Stockholm University, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume47
Issue3
Pages267-284
Publication date2023-09-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Nonverbal Behavior (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0191-5886 • E-ISSN: 1573-3653
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s10919-023-00426-9
OpenAlexW4376958703
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited46

People frequently report feeling more than one emotion at the same time (i.e., blended emotions), but studies on nonverbal communication of such complex states remain scarce. Actors (N = 18) expressed blended emotions consisting of all pairwise combinations of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness – using facial gestures, body movement, and vocal sounds – with the intention that both emotions should be equally prominent in the resulting expression. Accuracy of blended emotion recognition was assessed in two preregistered studies using a combined forced-choice and rating scale task. For each recording, participants were instructed to choose two scales (out of 5 available scales: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness) that best described their perception of the emotional content and judge how clearly each of the two chosen emotions were perceived. Study 1 (N = 38) showed that all emotion combinations were accurately recognized from multimodal (facial/bodily/vocal) expressions, with significantly higher ratings on scales corresponding to intended vs. non-intended emotions. Study 2 (N = 51) showed that all emotion combinations were also accurately perceived when the recordings were presented in unimodal visual (facial/bodily) and auditory (vocal) conditions, although accuracy was lower in the auditory condition. To summarize, results suggest that blended emotions, including combinations of both same-valence and other-valence emotions, can be accurately recognized from dynamic facial/bodily and vocal expressions. The validated recordings of blended emotion expressions are freely available for research purposes

Anger · Cognitive psychology · Developmental psychology · Disgust · Emotion classification · Emotion Perception · Emotional expression · Facial expression · Feeling · Happiness · Nonverbal communication · Perception · Sadness · Communication · Emotion and Mood Recognition · Face Recognition and Perception · Multisensory perception and integration · Psychology · Social Psychology

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