Adult Perceptions of Positive and Negative Infant Emotional Expressions

Abstract

Adults' perceptions provide information about the emotional meaning of infant facial expressions. This study asks whether similar facial movements influence adult per- ceptions of emotional intensity in both infant positive (smile) and negative (cry face) facial expressions. Ninety-five college students rated a series of naturally occurring and digitally edited images of infant facial expressions. Naturally occurring smiles and cry faces involving the co-occurrence of greater lip movement, mouth opening, and eye constriction, were rated as expressing stronger positive and negative emo- tion, respectively, than expressions without these 3 features. Ratings of digitally ed- ited expressions indicated that eye constriction contributed to higher ratings of posi- tive emotion in smiles (i.e., in Duchenne smiles) and greater eye constriction contributed to higher ratings of negative emotion in cry faces. Stronger mouth open- ing contributed to higher ratings of arousal in both smiles and cry faces. These find- ings indicate a set of similar facial movements are linked to perceptions of greater emotional intensity, whether the movements occur in positive or negative infant emo- tional expressions. This proposal is discussed with reference to discrete, com- ponential, and dynamic systems theories of emotion.