1. Does social context unconsciously influence readers’ emotional language comprehension?
Meghan Brzinski and David Havas, Ph.D.
University of Wisconsin – Whitewater, Psychology
THE QUESTION
Do others’ facial expressions influence our ability to comprehend emotional language?
METHOD
Subjects
15/40 UWW undergraduate students
Backward Masking Procedure
Shown a “Target” happy or angry facial expression for 30ms.
Shown a “Masking" neutral facial expression for 1000ms.
Shown a pleasant or unpleasant sentence.
Stimuli
4 Angry, 4 happy, and 12 neutral faces.
48 pleasant and 48 unpleasant sentences from (1).
Procedure
4 blocks of 12 trials with same target emotion and neutral masks.
Each block contains half pleasant and half unpleasant sentences in random order.
Participants’ Task
Judge the sentence sensibility as quickly and accurately as possible.
PRELIMINARY RESULTS
Means are residual log-transformed reading times (after controlling for sentence length) for correct trials only.
Preliminary data support predictions; data collection will continue.
Final data set will be analyzed using 2-way (target condition x sentence type) within- subjects ANOVA.
BACKGROUND RESEARCH
One’s own facial expressions influence emotional language comprehension,
Participants read pleasant sentences faster when smiling than when frowning, and vice versa for unpleasant sentences (1).
Possibly because facial feedback contributes to a simulation (2) of the linguistic content (3).
Facial expression are unconsciously elicited by the social context (4).
Backward masking prevented participants from consciously perceiving pictures (5) of happy and angry facial expressions.
Facial muscles for smiling and frowning were measured with EMG.
Within 500ms after exposure, participants unconsciously mimicked the facial expression.
POTENTIAL IMPLICATIONS
Results may support embodied theories of language comprehension (3), and extend them toward applied (e.g., political, educational, clinical) social contexts.
Next steps will use Electromyography (EMG) measures of facial activity to further support hypothesis.
Frown muscle EMG Smile muscle EMG
REFERENCES
1. Havas, Glenberg, & Rinck (2007). Emotion simulation in language comprehension. Psychon. Bull. & Rev., 14,
2. Barsalou (1999). Perceptual Symbol Systems. Beh. & Brain Sci., 22,
3. Havas & Matheson (2013). The functional role of the periphery in emotional language comprehension. Frontiers in Psych., 4, 1-16.
4. Dimberg, Thunberg, & Elmehed (2000). Unconscious facial reactions to emotional facial expressions. Psychol. Sci., 11, 86–89.
5. Ekman & Friesen (1976). Pictures of facial affect. Consulting Psychologists Press.
HYPOTHESES
Participants will read pleasant sentences faster after being unconsciously exposed to a happy facial expression than an angry facial expression, and vice versa for unpleasant sentences.