Emotional expressivity of the observer mediates recognition of affective states from human body movements

Research on human motion perception shows that people are highly adept at inferring emotional states from body movements. Yet, this process is mediated by a number of individual factors and experiences. Within this study, we tackle two questions. Firstly, we ask which part of the body transmits the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cognition and emotion 2020-10, Vol.34 (7), p.1370-1381
Main Authors: Bachmann, Julia, Zabicki, Adam, Munzert, Jörn, Krüger, Britta
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acknowledgment
Adult
Arm
Body movement
embodied simulation
Emotion recognition
Emotional behavior
Emotional expressivity
Emotional states
Emotions
Female
Gestures
Human Body
Humans
Male
Motion detection
Movement
Perception
point-light displays
Recognition, Psychology
Self expression
Simulation
Young Adult
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Summary:Research on human motion perception shows that people are highly adept at inferring emotional states from body movements. Yet, this process is mediated by a number of individual factors and experiences. Within this study, we tackle two questions. Firstly, we ask which part of the body transmits the key information that is used to infer affective states. Secondly, we address how the observer's own emotional expressivity influences the recognition process. We used two types of impoverished point-light displays depicting the same emotional interactions as either arm or trunk movements. Results showed that participants used different sources of information in an emotion-specific manner. Participants with richer self-reported emotional expressivity showed higher recognition accuracies overall but also benefited more from information delivered by arm gestures. We interpret our findings in terms of embodied simulation, suggesting that emotion perception constitutes a function of the expressing body and the individual observer.
ISSN:0269-9931
1464-0600
DOI:10.1080/02699931.2020.1747990