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Happy mouth and sad eyes: scanning emotional facial expressions.

Happy mouth and sad eyes: scanning emotional facial expressions.
Happy mouth and sad eyes: scanning emotional facial expressions.
There is evidence that specific regions of the face such as the eyes are particularly relevant for the decoding of emotional expressions, but it has not been examined whether scan paths of observers vary for facial expressions with different emotional content. In this study, eye-tracking was used to monitor scanning behavior of healthy participants while looking at different facial expressions. Locations of fixations and their durations were recorded, and a dominance ratio (i.e., eyes and mouth relative to the rest of the face) was calculated. Across all emotional expressions, initial fixations were most frequently directed to either the eyes or the mouth. Especially in sad facial expressions, participants more frequently issued the initial fixation to the eyes compared with all other expressions. In happy facial expressions, participants fixated the mouth region for a longer time across all trials. For fearful and neutral facial expressions, the dominance ratio indicated that both the eyes and mouth are equally important. However, in sad and angry facial expressions, the eyes received more attention than the mouth. These results confirm the relevance of the eyes and mouth in emotional decoding, but they also demonstrate that not all facial expressions with different emotional content are decoded equally. Our data suggest that people look at regions that are most characteristic for each emotion.
emotion, facial expressions, eye-tracking, scan path
1528-3542
860-865
Eisenbarth, Hedwig
41af3dcb-da48-402b-a488-49de88e64f0c
Alpers, Georg W.
2a0dc89c-ed1d-428b-b0ab-6f7efb1026df
Eisenbarth, Hedwig
41af3dcb-da48-402b-a488-49de88e64f0c
Alpers, Georg W.
2a0dc89c-ed1d-428b-b0ab-6f7efb1026df

Eisenbarth, Hedwig and Alpers, Georg W. (2011) Happy mouth and sad eyes: scanning emotional facial expressions. Emotion, 11 (4), 860-865. (doi:10.1037/a0022758). (PMID:21859204)

Record type: Article

Abstract

There is evidence that specific regions of the face such as the eyes are particularly relevant for the decoding of emotional expressions, but it has not been examined whether scan paths of observers vary for facial expressions with different emotional content. In this study, eye-tracking was used to monitor scanning behavior of healthy participants while looking at different facial expressions. Locations of fixations and their durations were recorded, and a dominance ratio (i.e., eyes and mouth relative to the rest of the face) was calculated. Across all emotional expressions, initial fixations were most frequently directed to either the eyes or the mouth. Especially in sad facial expressions, participants more frequently issued the initial fixation to the eyes compared with all other expressions. In happy facial expressions, participants fixated the mouth region for a longer time across all trials. For fearful and neutral facial expressions, the dominance ratio indicated that both the eyes and mouth are equally important. However, in sad and angry facial expressions, the eyes received more attention than the mouth. These results confirm the relevance of the eyes and mouth in emotional decoding, but they also demonstrate that not all facial expressions with different emotional content are decoded equally. Our data suggest that people look at regions that are most characteristic for each emotion.

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Accepted/In Press date: 15 November 2010
Published date: August 2011
Keywords: emotion, facial expressions, eye-tracking, scan path
Organisations: Psychology

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 384813
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/384813
ISSN: 1528-3542
PURE UUID: bd8b67bf-f7c2-40d4-9833-08a24a6f2817
ORCID for Hedwig Eisenbarth: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-0521-2630

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Date deposited: 13 Jan 2016 12:09
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:51

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Contributors

Author: Hedwig Eisenbarth ORCID iD
Author: Georg W. Alpers

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