Maureen O'Sullivan

Universals and cultural differences in the judgments of facial expressions of emotion.

We present here new evidence of cross-cultural agreement in the judgement of facial expression. Subjects in 10 cultures performed a more complex judgment task than has been used in previous cross-cultural studies. Instead of limiting the subjects to selecting only one emotion term for each expression, this task allowed them to indicate that multiple emotions were evident and the intensity of each emotion. Agreement was very high across cultures about which emotion was the most intense. The 10 cultures also agreed about the second most intense emotion signaled by an expression and about the relative intensity among expressions of the same emotion. However, cultural differences were found in judgments of the absolute level of emotional intensity.

Smiles When Lying

Subtle differences among forms of smiling distinguished when subjects were truthful and when they lied about experiencing pleasant feelings. Expressions that included muscular activity around the eyes in addition to the smiling lips occurred more often when people were actually enjoying themselves as compared with when enjoyment was feigned to conceal negative emotions. Smiles that included traces of muscular actions associated with disgust, fear, contempt, or sadness occurred more often when subjects were trying to mask negative emotions with a happy mask. When these differences among types of smiling were ignored and smiling was treated as a unitary phenomenon, there was no difference between truthful and deceptive behavior.

A Few Can Catch a Liar

Research suggests that most people cannot tell from demeanor when others are lying. Such poor performance is typical not only of laypeople but also of most professionals concerned with lying. In this study, three professional groups with special interest or skill in deception, two law-enforcement groups and a select group of clinical psychologists, obtained high accuracy in judging videotapes of people who were lying or telling the truth about their opinions. These findings strengthen earlier evidence that some professional lie catchers are highly accurate, and that behavioral clues to lying are detectable in real time. This study also provides the first evidence that some psychologists can achieve high accuracy in catching lies.

Invited article: Face, voice, and body in detecting deceit

Studies based on mean accuracy of a group of subjects suggest that most observers do no better than chance in detecting the lies of others. We argue that a case-by-case methodology, like that used in polygraphy studies may be more useful. Three behavioral measures (two kinds of smiles and pitch) were used to make predictions about the lying or truthfulness of each of 31 subjects. A case-by-case analysis of the hits and misses achieved in this way yielded an over-all accuracy of 86%. The effect on lie detection accuracy of individual differences in the use and control of different behavioral channels is discussed.

What You Say and How You Say It: The Contribution of Speech Content and Voice Quality to Judgments of Others

In three studies, judgments based on separated channels (speech content, voice quality, face alone and body alone) were correlated with judgments based on combined channels (speech, face + speech, and face + body + speech). The judges observed spontaneous behavior in two different types of interview situations and rated various aspects of the behavior. Correlations between separated and combined channels varied significantly depending on the kind of behavior judged, the attribute rated, and whether other channels of information were available.

Confusions about context in the judgment of facial expression: A reply to “the contempt expression and the relativity thesis”

A recent study of the effect of context in the judgment of contempt facial expression (Russell, 1991) was flawed by several confusions about what constitutes context. We argue that the context used should have ecological validity, through the use of many, rather than a few, facial expressions, which are spontaneous rather than posed, and which are judged by carefully selected judgment tasks, using clearly defined or well-understood emotional terms. The confusion in Russells work between accuracy studies and agreement studies is also addressed.

Contradictions in the study of contempt: What's it all about? Reply to Russell

A number of methodological problems make it difficult to draw any conclusions from Russells studies of contempt, including a task which may maximize the influence of unfamiliarity with the task, and instructions which may encourage observers to rate many rather than few emotions. We raise questions also about ecological validity, and the appropriateness of using still photographs to study the influence of context on the jugments of emotion.