Studies // Cited work
Emotional expressions reconsidered: Challenges to inferring emotion from human facial movements
Barrett, L. F., Adolphs, R., Marsella, S., Martinez, A. M., & Pollak, S. D. (2019). Emotional expressions reconsidered: Challenges to inferring emotion from human facial movements.
Level D Review doi:10.1177/1529100619832930
What this study supports
Supports the claim that facial configurations are not reliable, specific indicators of emotional states across cultures, situations and people, although they co-occur above chance. A narrative review by authors associated with one theoretical position; critics dispute parts of it.
- Who was studied
- Not applicable: a large review of production and perception studies for six emotion categories.
- Design
- Review
- Level of evidence
- Cross-sectional, observational, qualitative work and narrative reviews.
Claims that rest on it
Each claim states what the site asserts, at what strength, and with what caveat.
EmpiricalLevel DConfidence MODERATE
Facial movements are not reliable, specific indicators of emotional states across people, situations and cultures: typical configurations co-occur with emotions more than chance, but weakly and inconsistently.
- Scope
- Six common emotion categories in studies of facial production and perception.
- Caveat
- A narrative review associated with one theoretical position; some researchers argue that the evidence for expression–emotion links is stronger.
Last reviewed · Review due · facial-movements-not-reliable
EmpiricalLevel DConfidence MODERATE
A meta-analysis found that six classic basic emotions did not reliably co-occur with their predicted facial expressions: average co-occurrence effect sizes were .13 for full expressions coded with FACS and .23 including partial expressions, and reported and expressed intensity correlated on average at .30.
- Scope
- Studies that recorded both a reported emotion and facial behaviour for happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, fear and surprise.
- Caveat
- Heterogeneity between samples was found, and co-occurrence was highest for disgust and lowest for surprise, so the averages do not describe every emotion equally.
Last reviewed · Review due · measuring-facial-expression-cooccurrence