The effect of social presence on the facial and verbal expression of emotion and the...

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The effect of social presence on the facial and verbal expression of emotion and

the interrelationships among emotion componentsJournal of Nonverbal Behavior; New York; Spring 2002; Victoria Lee;Hugh Wagner;

Volume: 26Issue: 1

Start Page: 3-25

ISSN: 01915886

Subject

Terms:

Emotions

Women

Nonverbal communication

Interpersonal communication

Abstract:In a study, women were videotaped while they spoke about a positive and a negative

experience either in the presence of an experimenter or alone. They gave self-reports of

their emotional experience, and the videotapes were rated for facial and verbal expression.

Full Text:Copyright Human Sciences Press, Inc. Spring2002

[Headnote]ABSTRACT. Women were videotaped while they spoke about a positive and a negative experience either in the presence ofan experimenter or alone. They gave selfreports of their emotional experience, and the videotapes were rated for facialand verbal expression of emotion. Participants spoke less about their emotions when the experimenter (E) was present.When E was present, during positive disclosures they smiled more, but in negative disclosures they showed less negativeand more positive expression. Facial behavior was only related to experienced emotion during positive disclosure whenalone. Verbal behavior was related to experienced emotion for positive and negative disclosures when alone. These resultsshow that verbal and nonverbal behaviors, and their relationship with emotional experience, depend on the type ofemotion, the nature of the emotional event, and the social context.

KEY WORDS: nonverbal behavior; emotion; social presence; facial expression; verbal expression.

Understanding the interaction among different components of emotional states is necessary for a

comprehensive account of emotion (Nichols & Zax, 1977). In this paper, we examine the

interrelations of three components of emotion: facial, verbal, and experiential. We also examine

how these interrelationships depend on the social situation in which the emotion is experienced,

and on the valence of the experienced emotion.

Interrelations Among the Components of Emotion

It has widely been assumed, tacitly or explicitly, by those researching expressive behavior that

people vary on a continuum of general expressiveness; that is, expression in one channel isaccompanied by expression in other channels. Among those who have made this explicit,

Manstead (1991) wrote, "Some persons are highly expressive, making their feelings apparent

through facial expressions, gestures, tone of voice, and what they say, whereas others are much

more reserved" (p. 285). Similarly, Halberstadt, Crisp, and Eaton (1999) wrote, "Expressiveness

is a persistent pattern or style of exhibiting facial, body, vocal, and verbal expressions . . . Our

judgments about a person's style of expressiveness are based on aggregates of that individual's

facial, body, vocal, and verbal expressions over time and across situations" (p. 110). The

Affective Communication Test (ACT; Friedman, Prince, Riggio, & DiMatteo, 1980) assesses

general expressiveness using a number of self-report items relating to various modes of

expression and various situations. In a related field, the postulated relationship between

expression (or, conversely, inhibition) and health has been investigated operational izingexpressiveness in different ways, including facial (e.g., Malatesta, Jonas, & Izard, 1987) and

verbal (e.g., Pennebaker & O'Heeron, 1984). Thus, expression should covary in different


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expressive channels, degree of expressiveness should be persistent and consistent, and the effects

of inhibiting expression should not depend on the channel of expression.

Considering how widespread this assumption is, there is little direct evidence that expression in

different channels is correlated. Buck, Miller, and Caul (1974) found a nonsignificant correlation

of .32 between the frequency of "personal" verbal responses to affective slides and their measure

of facial communication. However, this correlation diminishes to .15 when the effect ofcovariation with skin conductance responses is partialed out. Indirect evidence of a lack of

association comes from a study by DePaulo, Blank, Swaim, and Hairfield (1992). They used the

ACT to identify people who were "dispositionally expressive and unexpressive." Participants'

behavior while they attempted to appear natural, or more or less expressive than usual was

videotaped, and judged for expression by viewers who saw the full audiovisual record, visual

only, audio only, or read a verbal transcript. All effects were smaller for the last two judgments

than for judgments involving nonverbal channels, giving reason to suppose that there is some

lack of generality of expression. One aim of the present research was to investigate the

relationship between verbal and facial expression during the oral description of positive and

negative emotional experiences.

The second aim of this research was to investigate the relationship between the facial and

experiential components of emotion. Most theorists have held that there is generally a positive

relationship between the two, although this relationship can be modified by situationally

determined display rules (e.g., Buck, 1984; Ekman, 1972; Izard, 1991). However, the evidence

for a positive relationship is equivocal. In Ekman, Friesen, and Ancoli's (1980) study,

participants were shown positive and negative films, and the results suggest a positive

relationship between emotional feelings as reported by the participants and their facial activity as

measured by the Facial Action Coding System (FACS; Ekman & Friesen, 1978). However, it

should be noted that Ekman et al. (1980) failed to report data for a film that produced equally

strong positive affect but little smiling. Wagner, MacDonald, and Manstead (1986) found some

support for this relationship by showing that observers could identify from videotaped facial

expressions the emotions reported by people viewing emotional stimuli. However, this coherence

of emotion terms applied to anger, disgust, surprise, and happiness, but not to fear or sadness.

Furthermore, they found no relationship between intensity of reported emotion and rated

intensity of facial expression. Rosenberg and Ekman (1994) used films intended to elicit disgust

and fear, and cued participants to report momentary emotions a number of times during each

film. Their results showed coherence between a wide range of self-reported emotions and FACS

codings of the videotaped facial behavior at those times. However, only half of the emotional

facial expressions were accompanied by subjective feelings. Jakobs, Manstead, and Fischer

(1999) found that people who smiled while viewing humorous films reported more positive

emotions than those who did not smile.

In contrast, Fridlund (1991) and Fridlund, Kenworthy, and Jaffey (1992) reported that the

intensity of facial expression during viewing of humorous or sad films was not related to

reported intensity of emotional experience. Fernandez-Dols, Sanchez, Carrera, and Ruiz-Belda

(1997) compared emotion self-reports and FACS codings of facial behavior during film viewing,

and found that for only two of 35 participants did the FACS codings match those predicted for

the intense emotions reported. Jakobs, Manstead, and Fischer (1996) found no significant

relationships between experienced emotions and the expected facial displays in people viewing

sad films. Reviewing this literature, Manstead, Fischer, and Jakobs (1999) concluded that

whether a relationship between self-report and facial display exists and how strong it is depends

upon the intensity of the emotional stimulus, the type of emotion, and the social context.

The Effect of Social Presence on Emotional Expression


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The majority of research on facial behavior has examined individuals in isolation from other

people. Often, this has been with the intention of investigating the nature of "spontaneous" facial

expressions, unmodified by social influences (e.g., Buck, Savin, Miller, & Caul, 1972), or

because the focus of interest has been to isolate the expressions of "basic" emotions (e.g.,

Ekman, 1989). In recent years, however, greater attention has been paid to facial expression, and

nonverbal behavior in general, in social situations (e.g., Lee & Beattie, 1998). Wagner and Lee

(1999) have argued that, in order to understand nonverbal behavior in social situations we muststudy it together with the verbal behavior that accompanies it. Thus, the social situation is crucial

in understanding not only facial behavior, but also its relationship with verbal behavior.

Wagner and Lee (1999) reviewed research comparing emotional facial expression when people

are alone or in social situations. These studies have produced conflicting results. On the one hand

is a series of results suggesting that social presence increases facial expression (e.g., Andrus,

1946; Bainum, Lounsbury, & Pollio, 1984; Chapman, 1973; 1975; Chapman & Wright, 1976;

Fridlund, 1991; Kraut & Johnston, 1979; Young & Fry, 1966). For example, Chapman and his

colleagues showed that 7- and 8-year-old children smiled and laughed more at funny stories

when another child from their own class was present as an audience than when alone. They

laughed even more when the other child was a fellow listener, but less when the companion wasolder or engaged in a different task. In contrast, a number of studies show that social presence

inhibits facially expressive behavior (Friesen & Ekman, see Ekman, 1972 and Friesen, 1972;

Kilbride & Yarczower, 1980; 1983; Kleck, Vaughan, Cartwright-Smith, Vaughan, Colby, &

Lanzetta, 1976; Kraut, 1982; Yarczower, Kilbride, & Hill, 1979). For example, the studies of

Kilbride and Yarczower (1980) showed that the presence of experimenters inhibited children's

facial expression compared to when they were alone. Wagner and Lee (1999) pointed out that

studies in these two groups are distinguished by two factors: the role of the other person, and the

relationship between the people involved. They review further studies showing that when the

other person is a friend facial expression is increased, but when the other is a stranger expression

tends to decrease (e.g., Buck, Losow, Murphy, & Costanzo, 1992; Wagner & Smith, 1991).

Further systematic investigation of the effects of social presence on expressive behavior stems

from Fridlund's (1991) argument that sociality does not necessarily require the physical presence

of another person. He showed that people viewing humorous films believing that a friend was

viewing the same film in an adjacent room smiled just as much as those whose friend was

viewing with them. Fridlund et al. (1992) showed a similar effect for sad expressions during

viewing of sad films. Jakobs et al. (1999), in a modified and extended replication of Fridlund's

(1991) study, showed that both stimulus intensity and level of sociality had a distinct impact on

smiling. It would seem, however, that the impact of social context was limited to the physical

presence versus absence of others: whether the friend was engaged in the same or a different task

made no difference to the amount of smiling. Jakobs, Manstead, and Fischer (1996) conducted asubsequent study, which was procedurally similar to their first except that this time they used sad

film clips rather than happy ones. Those participants who viewed the sadness evoking film clips

alone showed less smiling and more negative emotional displays than did those viewing the

same clips in a more social situation.

The finding that the alone situation evoked more fear and sadness displays than did any of the

four social conditions could be seen to be consistent with the operation of a display rule that one

should conceal sadness or fear in situations where others are present. Such findings are similar to

those of the Japanese-American study of Friesen and Ekman (Ekman, 1972; Friesen, 1972).

Their study is, of course, usually cited as an example of the operation of a cultural display rule,

namely a Japanese display to mask negative affect resulting from viewing distressing films witha smile in the presence of another person. However, Wagner and Lee (1999) pointed out that in

both cultural groups studied, the presence of another person produced increased variation in


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facial behavior. Specifically, in both groups the presence of an interviewer resulted in a decrease

in facial expressions of a type we might call "appropriate" to the stimulus material, and an

increase in expressions that are "inappropriate" to the stimuli, predominantly smiles.

Overview of the Present Study

In the present study, female participants recounted positive and negative emotional events eitherin the presence or absence of a female experimenter. The experimenter was known to all

participants, and would not be seen as an authoritative or threatening a figure. All talks were

videotaped, and judgments were made of facial and verbal expressiveness. The following

hypotheses were investigated:

Hypothesis 1.

The facial and verbal components of emotional expression will be positively related. As we saw

above, there is little direct evidence for this when people are alone, so the prediction in that

condition is based on the usual assumption of a trait of general expressiveness. When

participants are talking to the experimenter, we expect a positive relationship because verbal andnonverbal channels should work together to aid communication. However, it is not clear that we

should expect this for both positive and negative expression in both positive and negative talks.

Hypothesis 2.

Those who recount positive emotional events in the presence of the experimenter will show more

positive facial expression (e.g., smiling) than those recounting similar events in the absence of

the experimenter. This hypothesis is derived from the findings of Jakobs et al. (1999).

Hypothesis 3.

Those who recount negative events in the presence of the experimenter will evidence more

positive and less negative facial expression of emotion than those recounting similar events

alone. This prediction follows from the results of jakobs et al. (1996), and Wagner and Lee's

(1999) interpretation of Ekman (1972) and Friesen (1972).

Hypothesis 4.

During positive talks there will be a significant correlation between positive facial

expressiveness and selfreported positive emotion for participants in the alone condition.

Method

Participants

Fifty-four female' undergraduate students from the University of Manchester, UK participated in

this experiment, and received course credit for doing so. Their ages ranged from 18 years to 48

years, with a mean age of 20.5 years (SD = 4.8). Twenty-eight participants were randomly

assigned to talk about their positive and negative emotional events in the presence of the female

experimenter, while 26 recounted similar events alone. All participants would have recognized

the experimenter as a teaching assistant.

Procedure


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Female undergraduates were approached individually by the experimenter and asked if they

would be willing to participate in a study on emotional disclosure, in which they would have to

talk about both the most positive and negative emotional events they had experienced in the past

year. Those who agreed to do so were recruited to come along to the laboratory at a designated

time within that same week.

Upon arrival at the laboratory, the participant was seated in a comfortable armchair facing asecond chair approximately 2 m away. The experimenter chatted with the participants to help

them feel at ease. To one side of the second chair was a table on which a miniature video camera

was hidden among a number of files, tape-cassette and videocassette boxes. The camera gave an

almost full frontal, head and torso view of the participant. Hidden wires passed the signal to a

VCR in an adjacent room. There was also a tape recorder on the table, along with a number of

blank tapes, which were loaded and switched on and off before and after each talk. The

participant was fitted with a tie clip microphone which ostensibly led to the audio recorder, but

which in fact also led to the VCR. Before proceeding, the experimenter left the room, seemingly

to collect response sheets, and started the VCR.

For those in the presence condition, the experimenter sat in the chair facing the participant andinformed her that she should talk to the experimenter for 2 min about both a positive and a

negative emotional event experienced within the past year. The order in which the positive and

negative events were recounted was counterbalanced. It was explained that if she were to finish

before being told that the time was up, she should think about the event and decide if there was

anything more that she would like to add. In the absence condition the participant was informed

that she should talk about a positive and negative emotional event that she had experienced

within the past year. The experimenter would leave the room while she did so, and would return

after 2 min. She was told to start talking as soon as the experimenter had left the room, and that

if she finished before the time was up she should think about the event and decide if there was

anything more that she would like to add. The order in which the positive and negative events

were recounted was again counterbalanced.

In both experimental conditions, after the end of each talk period, participants completed a self-

report questionnaire assessing the extent to which they had experienced specific emotions while

talking about the events, that is their emotional response in the laboratory. Ratings were made for

five emotions (happy, sad, angry, afraid, disgusted), each on a five-point Likert scale (0 = not at

all to 4 = very much). To preserve the spontaneity of participants' behavior, they were not

informed about the covert videotaping until the experiment had been completed in its entirety,

when they were extensively debriefed. Permission to use the videotaped recordings was

solicited, and all participants gave consent. Anonymity and confidentiality regarding collected

data were assured.

Ethical Considerations

The procedures used in this study raise two ethical issues. The study was designed following the

Ethical Principles of the British Psychological Society, dating from 1992 (see BPS, 2000), which

are broadly similar to the Ethical Standards of the American Psychological Association (APA,

1992). It was considered and approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Psychology

Department of the University of Manchester, itself operating within the BPS Principles.

Coercion of participants. The same investigator personally recruited participants, conducted the

laboratory study, and debriefed them. For most of the participants, she served as an assistant instatistics classes, helping them individually with their learning. She was not involved in any way

with the assessment of the students, and it was made clear to them that they were completely free


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to opt out of participating in this study. They were aware that alternatives were available, in the

form of participation in studies for other researchers, or of completing an assignment on

experimental methodology. These steps protected participants in accordance with Standards

6.09, 6.11 (b), (c), and (d) of the APA Ethical Standards. Although all participants appeared to

be keen to help, in hindsight it would have been preferable to avoid any suggestion of coercion

by having recruitment conducted by a person with no teaching contact with the participants.

Covert videotaping. Standard 6.13 seems to expressly forbid filming or recording of participants

without their consent in this type of study. However, after considering the BPS Ethical

Principles, and after consultation with colleagues and members of the Research Ethics

Committee, it was considered that the scientific aims of the study would be compromised by

revealing the videotaping beforehand, and that this partly justified the withholding of this

information (in accordance with APA Standards 6.12 and 6.15(a) and (c)). In addition,

participants were informed that they were being audiotaped, so they were aware that they did not

have privacy during the recording sessions. Participants were allowed to view the video

recording after the completion of the study, and were told at that point that they could opt to have

the recording erased, without prejudice to the credits they had earned for participating. Finally,

Principle 4.1 of the BPS Ethical Principles states, "The withholding of information or themisleading of participants is unacceptable if the participants are typically likely to object or show

unease once debriefed." Over many years of experience with covert recording, requests to have

the recordings destroyed have been extremely rare, and a strong objection is almost unknown,

even when the researchers have not been in a position of authority. On the contrary, the typical

response has been interest and/or amusement. In view of these points, the Research Ethics

Committee agreed that the procedures adopted in this study were acceptable.

Data Reduction

Verbatim transcripts were made of every talk session from the videotaped recordings. Two

female judges, psychology graduate students blind to the hypotheses of the study, independently

read the transcripts and, for each one, made two ratings: the extent to which the participant

verbally expressed positive emotion, and the extent to which she verbally expressed negative

emotion. The ratings were made on five-point Likert scales (0 = not at all, 4 = very much).

Global ratings of positive and negative emotion, rather than individual ratings of specific

emotions, were given in order to coincide with the facial expressiveness data (see below). One

judge scored the transcripts in their recorded order, the second scored in reverse order. A few

weeks after reading and rating the transcripts the same two judges independently viewed the

videotaped recordings of the talk sessions. judges watched each recording twice, without sound,

and made one rating after each, again on five-point Likert scales (0 = not at all, 4 = very much):

first, the extent to which the participant showed positive facial expression, and second the extentto which she showed negative facial expression. One judge rated the videotapes in their recorded

order, the second in reverse order.2

Results

Content of Disclosures

Among the positive talks, 20 related to academic achievement, and 20 to being with friends or

family. Of the negative experiences recounted, 23 concerned relationship problems and

relationship breakdown. Others included deaths of family or friends, being assaulted, and leaving

home for the first time.

Data Analysis


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Effective reliabilities of the ratings of the two judges were computed for each measure for each

event type using the Spearman-Brown formula (see Rosenthal, 1982). They ranged from R = .61

for ratings of facially expressed negative emotion during the negative talk, to R = .84 for facially

expressed negative emotion during the positive event. For each measure the mean of the judges'

ratings was computed and used in all analyses. At the end of each talk period, participants rated

the extent to which they had experienced specific emotions (happy, sad, angry, afraid, disgust)

while recounting the emotional experience. "Happy" ratings were used as a measure ofexperienced positive emotion, and the remaining four emotion categories were averaged to give

a measure of experienced negative emotion.

Manipulation Checks

It was necessary to establish that emotions appropriate to the specific talk conditions were

recounted and that, comparatively, other emotions were not talked about to a significant degree.

Mean verbally expressed emotion in all of the conditions of the study is shown in Table 1.

Planned comparisons were performed with an alpha of .05, and showed that verbal expression of

negative emotion was greater in negative than in positive talks, t (53) = 11.52, p < .0001, and

was greater than positive expression in negative talks, t (53) = 16.80, p < .0001; verbalexpression of positive emotion was greater in positive than in negative talks, t (53) = 12.05, p < .

0001, and was greater than negative expression in positive talks, t (53) = 9.73, p < .0001. Thus, it

was established that participants verbally expressed the appropriate emotions, and did so more

than they expressed inappropriate emotions.

TABLE 1

TABLE 2

It was also necessary to establish that the presence and absence conditions did not directly affect

the participants' emotional experience during the talks they gave. A 2 (E present vs. E absent) x 2

(positive talk vs. negative talk) X 2 (positive emotion vs. negative emotion) ANOVA, with

repeated measures on the last two factors, was conducted on self-reported emotion. Table 2

shows the mean experienced emotion for each condition of the study. No effects involving E

presence were significant, all Fs < 1.00. Thus, for both the positive and negative disclosure

sessions, there were no differences between the two experimental conditions in terms of the

extent to which participants reported feeling positive and negative emotion while recounting the

emotional experiences.

Finally, global ratings of expression might be subject to distortion if participants in different

conditions spoke for different lengths of time. For example, if people spoke for less time about

negative than positive topics, their expression might make less of a global impact on the raters.

To find if this was a problem in this study, the mean talk durations were examined. Mean

durations were: positive/E present-112.9 s; positive/E absent115.9 s; negative/E present-114.8 s;

negative/E absent 111.6 s. There are no significant differences among these means, and we are

justified in concluding that there is unlikely to be an effect of talk duration on ratings.

Effects of Social Presence on Behavioral Responses

Mean ratings of facially expressed emotion for the conditions of the experiment are shown inTable 3. Ratings were submitted to a 2 (E present vs. E absent) x 2 (positive talk vs. negative

talk) X 2 (positive emotion vs. negative emotion) ANOVA, with repeated measures on the last


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two factors. This showed a significant main effect of emotion, multivariate F (1, 52) = 10.42, p

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