• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.37-48
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• 2019

Current research explores the effect of language on the perception of facial emotion as suggested by the psychological construction theory of emotion by using a psychophysical method. In this study, we hypothesize that the perception of facial expression may be influenced if the observer is shown an affective word before he/she judges an expression. Moreover, we suggest that his/her understanding of a facial emotion will be in line with the conceptual context that the word denotes. During the two experiments conducted for this project, a control stimulus or words representing either angry or happy emotions were briefly presented to participants before they were shown a target face. These target faces were randomly selected from seven faces that were gradually morphed to show neutral to angry (in Experiment 1) and neutral to happy (in Experiment 2) expressions. The participants were asked to perform a two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) task to judge the emotion of the target face (i.e., decide whether it is angry or neutral, or happy or neutral). The results of Experiment 1 (when compared with the control condition) showed that words denoting anger decreased the point of subjective equality (PSE) for judging the emotion of the target as anger, whereas words denoting happiness increased the PSE. Experiment 2, in which participants had to judge expressions on a scale from happy to neutral, produced a contrasting pattern of results. The outcomes of this study support the claim of the psychological construction theory of emotion that the perception of facial emotion is an active construction process that may be influenced by information (such as affective words) that provide conceptual context.