450 ChapTER 13 Emotion, Stress, and Health
you will understand the importance of parental
facial expressions.
Still, there are cultural, social, and individual
limits to the supposedly universal readability of
facial expressions. When you perceive another
person’s expression, you are influenced by what
else is happening in the situation, by your own
emotional state, and by the cultural context
(Barrett, Mesquita, & Gendron, 2011). People are
better at identifying emotions expressed by others
in their own ethnic, national, or regional group
than they are at recognizing the emotions of for
eigners (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2003). And people
who are habitually angry and aggressive are more
likely to interpret other people’s neutral facial
expressions as being “angry”—which of course
maintains their anger and hostility (PentonVoak
et al., 2013).
Moreover, within a culture, facial expres
sions can have different meanings depending on
the situation; a smile can mean “I’m happy!” or
“I don’t want to make you angry while I tell you
this.” Likewise, people often interpret identical
facial expressions—even of universal emotions
such as disgust, sadness, and anger—in different
ways, depending on what else they are observing
in the immediate situation. For example, almost
all adults recognize the expression of disgust, if
that’s all they see in a picture of a face. But when
they see a picture of the same disgusted expres
sion on a man with his arm raised as if to strike,
they will say the expression is anger (Aviezer
et al., 2008).
Finally, of course, facial expressions are only
part of the emotional picture. People can feel
sad, anxious, or angry without letting it show—
and, conversely, they can use facial expressions
to lie about their feelings. In Shakespeare’s play
Henry VI, the villain who will become the evil
King Richard III says:Why, I can smile, and murder while I smile;
And cry content to that which grieves my heart;
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,
And frame my face to all occasions.Emotion and the Brain. LO 13.3 Various parts
of the brain are involved in the different com
ponents of emotional experience: recognizing
another person’s emotion, feeling a specific emo
tion, expressing an emotion, and acting on an
emotion. People who have a stroke that affects
brain areas involved in disgust are often unable to
feel disgusted. One young man with stroke dam
age in these regions had little or no emotional(Fridlund, 1994). This signaling function begins in
infancy. A baby’s expressions of misery or frustra
tion are apparent to most parents, who respond
by soothing an uncomfortable baby or feeding a
grumpy one (Izard, 1994b; Stenberg & Campos,
1990). And an infant’s happy smile usually melts
the heart of the weariest parent, provoking a
happy cuddle.
By the age of 6 to 7 months, babies reveal
a special sensitivity to adults’ fearful expres
sions (Leppänen & Nelson, 2012) and soon
begin to alter their own behavior in reaction
to their parents’ facial expressions of emotion.
This ability, too, has survival value. The visual
cliff studies described in Chapter 6 (page 215)
were originally designed to test for depth per
ception, which emerges early in infancy. But
in one experiment, 1yearold babies were put
on a more ambiguous visual cliff that did not
drop off sharply and thus did not automatically
evoke fear, as the original cliff did. In this case,
the babies’ behavior depended on their moth
ers’ expressions: 74 percent crossed the cliff
when their mothers put on a happy, reassuring
expression, but not a single infant crossed when
the mother showed an expression of fear (Sorce
et al., 1985). If you have ever watched a toddler
take a tumble and then look at his or her parent
before deciding whether to cry or to forget it,Great moms have always understood the importance
of facial feedback.Heidi Stetson Mario