Paula M. Niedenthal

Embodiment in Attitudes, Social Perception, and Emotion

Findings in the social psychology literatures on attitudes, social perception, and emotion demonstrate that social information processing involves embodiment, where embodiment refers both to actual bodily states and to simulations of experience in the brains modality-specific systems for perception, action, and introspection. We show that embodiment underlies social information processing when the perceiver interacts with actual social objects (online cognition) and when the perceiver represents social objects in their absence (offline cognition). Although many empirical demonstrations of social embodiment exist, no particularly compelling account of them has been offered. We propose that theories of embodied cognition, such as the Perceptual Symbol Systems (PSS) account (Barsalou, 1999), explain and integrate these findings, and that they also suggest exciting new directions for research. We compare the PSS account to a variety of related proposals and show how it addresses criticisms that have previously posed problems for the general embodiment approach.

The Simulation of Smiles (SIMS) model: Embodied simulation and the meaning of facial expression.

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 brains 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.

Implicit perception of affective information

Abstract Two experiments were conducted to demonstrate the implicit perception of nonverbal affective information. In the first experiment, subjects saw slides of a novel cartoon character paired with slides of faces expressing either joy or disgust over a series of learning trials. Face slides were presented immediately prior to the cartoon slides and were rendered undetectable in a metacontrast procedure. In a speeded discrimination task, subjects identified previously seen cartoon characters faster as such if those stimuli were paired with undetected slides of faces that expressed the same (compared to different) emotion as that expressed by faces paired with the cartoons during learning. In a second experiment, subjects formed an impression of a cartoon character that was paired with undetected slides of faces expressing joy, disgust, or a neutral expression. Subjects in the disgust condition endorsed more negative traits as descriptive of the cartoon and saw the cartoon as more similar to the typical member of negative social categories than did subjects in the joy condition. Taken together these findings provide some evidence for the implicit perception of nonverbal affective information. The possible role of undetected affective information in social perception is discussed.

Embodiment of emotion concepts.

Theories of embodied cognition hold that higher cognitive processes operate on perceptual symbols and that concept use involves partial reactivations of the sensory-motor states that occur during experience with the world. On this view, the processing of emotion knowledge involves a (partial) reexperience of an emotion, but only when access to the sensory basis of emotion knowledge is required by the task. In 2 experiments, participants judged emotional and neutral concepts corresponding to concrete objects (Experiment 1) and abstract states (Experiment 2) while facial electromyographic activity was recorded from the cheek, brow, eye, and nose regions. Results of both studies show embodiment of specific emotions in an emotion-focused but not a perceptual-focused processing task on the same words. A follow up in Experiment 3, which blocked selective facial expressions, suggests a causal, rather than simply a correlational, role for embodiment in emotion word processing. Experiment 4, using a property generation task, provided support for the conclusion that emotions embodied in conceptual tasks are context-dependent situated simulations rather than associated emotional reactions. Implications for theories of embodied simulation and for emotion theories are discussed.

BRIEF REPORT Perception of the duration of emotional events

Participants were trained on a temporal bisection task in which visual stimuli (a pink oval) of 400 ms and 1600 ms served as short and long standards, respectively. They were then presented comparison durations between 400 ms and 1600 ms, represented by faces expressing three emotions (anger, happiness, and sadness) and a neutral‐baseline facial expression. Relative to the neutral face, the proportion of long responses was higher, the psychophysical functions shifted to the left, and the bisection point values were lower for faces expressing any of the three emotions. These findings indicate that the duration of emotional faces was systematically overestimated compared to neural ones. Furthermore, consistent with arousal‐based models of time perception, temporal overestimation for the emotional faces increased with the duration values. It appears, therefore, that emotional faces increased the speed of the pacemaker of the internal clock.

An influence of positive affect on social categorization

This study investigated the influence of positive affect on social categorization. Subjects in whom positive affect had been induced, and control subjects, were asked to indicate the degree to which good and weak examples of positive and negative person categories fit those categories. Positive-affect subjects rated weak exemplars of positive, but not of negative, trait categories as better members of the categories than did control subjects. Results are interpreted as consistent with a growing literature suggesting that positive affect may involve increased cognitive flexibility in the way people relate positive or neutral ideas to one another, and increased access to multiple meanings of nonnegative cognitive material.

Emotional state and the detection of change in facial expression of emotion

A new method is presented for examining effects of emotion in the detection of change in facial expression of emotion. The method was used in one experiment, reported here. Participants who were induced to feel happiness, sadness, or neutral emotion, saw computerized 100-frame movies in which the first frame always showed a face expressing a specific emotion (e.g. happiness). The facial expression gradually became neutral over the course of the movie. Participants played the movie, changing the facial expression, and indicated the frame at which the initial expression was no longer present on the face. Emotion congruent expressions were perceived to persist longer than were emotion incongruent expressions. The findings are consistent with previous findings documenting enhanced perceptual processing of emotion congruent information. The value of the current technique, and the types of everyday situations that it might model are discussed. Copyright

Being Happy and Seeing ''Happy' ': Emotional State Mediates Visual Word Recognition

Lexical decision and word-naming experiments were conducted to examine influences of emotions in visual word recognition. Emotional states of happiness and sadness were induced with classical music. In the first two experiments, happy and sad participants (and neutral-emotion participants in Experiment 2) made lexical decisions about letter-strings, some of which were words with meanings strongly associated with the emotions happiness, love, sadness, and anger. Emotional state of the perceiver was associated with facilitation of response to words categorically related to that emotion (i.e. happy and sad words). However, such facilitation was not observed for words that were related by valence, but not category, to the induced emotions (i.e. love and anger words). Evidence for categorical influences of emotional state in word recognition was also observed in a third experiment that employed a word-naming task. Together the results support a categorical emotions model of the influences of emotion in informa...

Information Processing and the Study of the Self

Publisher Summary The self is an important concept in personality and social psychology. The mental representation of the self includes both abstract information about the persons attributes (semantic knowledge) and concrete information about the persons experiences, thoughts, and actions (episodic knowledge). Mental representations fall into two broad classes. Those representations that are perception based contain details extracted from stimulus information processed by the sensory-perceptual system. Representations that are meaning based contain the gist of an object or event, which has been abstracted from stimulus information by higher mental processes. The basic architecture of the cognitive system is briefly described in the chapter. Autobiographical memory is interesting in and of itself, but it also may be able to shed important light on various other aspects of information processing about the self. In addition to analyzing the structure of mental representations of the self, information-processing concepts may be useful in the study of the involvement of the self in social judgment and behavior.

Adult attachment and the perception of facial expression of emotion

Adult attachment orientation has been associated with specific patterns of emotion regulation. The present research examined the effects of attachment orientation on the perceptual processing of emotional stimuli. Experimental participants played computerized movies of faces that expressed happiness, sadness, and anger. Over the course of the movies, the facial expressions became neutral. Participants reported the frame at which the initial expression no longer appeared on the face. Under conditions of no distress (Study 1), fearfully attached individuals saw the offset of both happiness and anger earlier, and preoccupied and dismissive individuals later, than the securely attached individuals. Under conditions of distress (Study 2), insecurely attached individuals perceived the offset of negative facial expressions as occurring later than did the secure individuals, and fearfully attached individuals saw the offset later than either of the other insecure groups. The mechanisms underlying the effects are considered.