Behavioral and neural bases of the perception of facial expressions

面部表情感知的行为和神经基础

• 批准号: 1251101
• 负责人: Paula Niedenthal
• 金额: $ 47.42万
• 依托单位: University of Wisconsin-Madison
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-08-01 至 2017-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1251101&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Behavioral; neural; bases; perception; facial

Effective social communication and interaction rely on accurately detecting and interpreting the facial expressions of others. Facial expressions can convey many things, including emotions, attitudes, and intentions, and errors in interpreting the meaning of facial expressions are relatively common. These errors can be costly, given that accurate interpretation is critical in many different contexts. For example, it is important when establishing relationships with others, or for those who have to make quick judgments of intent (e.g., security agents). Dr. Paula Niedenthal and colleagues (University of Wisconsin at Madison) investigate the behavioral and neural processes that individuals use to interpret the meanings of the facial expressions they see in their social world. Their research focuses on the smile because of its fundamental role in guiding social interaction. While folk wisdom holds that smiles signal happy feelings, everyday experience and research findings document the extreme complexity of this expression. Niedenthal and colleagues propose a social-function typology. They hold that there exist three physically and dynamically distinct smiles that evolved to solve basic tasks of social living. The tasks include 1) rewarding the behavior of self and other (reward smiles), 2) creating social bonds (affiliative smiles), and 3) negotiating social hierarchies (dominance smiles). How, then, do individuals arrive at an accurate interpretation of a given smile, and why do inaccuracies sometimes occur, especially in cross-cultural interactions? Niedenthal and colleagues will study the roles of two social behaviors, eye contact and facial mimicry, in the process of interpreting smiles. Eye contact is hypothesized to be a trigger of facial mimicry, facilitating the reproduction of the perceived smile on the perceiver's own face. Facial mimicry, consistent with recent "embodied emotion" theories of emotional information processing is hypothesized to yield a simulation of a corresponding affective state, which provides sufficient information for the accurate interpretation of the smile. The neural bases of these social behaviors, as well as the role of other neural systems in creating the "feeling" of a smile in the perceiver of the smile, will be tested in neuroimaging studies. Finally, the central role of culture in moderating the tendency to achieve eye contact and to engage in facial mimicry will be explored. This research promises to advance the theory and techniques that scientists use to conduct research on human facial expression, and on the ways in which an individual's behavior and brain work together to decode facial expressions, including but not limited to the smile. Undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison will work, in teaching and laboratory settings, to advance these ideas. A number of clinical conditions, including autism, schizophrenia, and Parkinson's disease, are associated with striking deficits in interpreting facial expression of emotion. Understanding of these populations will be facilitated by the insights from this research, and new relationships, such as those between humans and robots, will be informed. Finally, as the most frequent and the most rewarding facial expression, the smile is critical in all international relations. Cultural relativity in interpreting the smile, revealed in the present investigations, will promote greater understanding among the world's peoples.