Facial feedback hypothesis
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The facial feedback hypothesis states that facial movement can influence emotional experience. For example, an individual who is forced to smile during a social event will actually come to find the event more of an enjoyable experience.
Background
Charles Darwin was among the first to suggest that physiological changes caused by an emotion had a direct impact on, rather than being just the consequence of that emotion. He wrote:
The free expression by outward signs of an emotion intensifies it. On the other hand, the repression, as far as this is possible, of all outward signs softens our emotions... Even the simulation of an emotion tends to arouse it in our minds.
Following on this idea, William James proposed that, contrary to common belief, awareness of bodily changes activated by a stimulus "is the emotion". If no bodily changes are felt, there is only an intellectual thought, devoid of emotional warmth. In The Principles of Psychology, James wrote: "Refuse to express a passion, and it dies".
This proved difficult to test, and little evidence was available, apart from some animal research and studies of people with severely impaired emotional functioning. The facial feedback hypothesis, "that skeletal muscle feedback from facial expressions plays a causal role in regulating emotional experience and behaviour", developed almost a century after Darwin.
See also
- Theories on emotion
- Facial Action Coding System
- James-Lange theory
- Power posing
- Two-factor theory of emotion
