1. Facial Expression: Predicting and promoting positive outcomes
Daniel Messinger, Ph.D.

2. New topics Emotional Intelligence Positive Psychology
Psychobiology of morality
Sympathy and empathy
Mother-toddler talk
Emotion work Flight attendants
Averill
Messinger

3. Tell me their story
Messinger

4. Questions
How might positive emotion and its expression affect life outcomes?
Describe how expressed emotion relates to
Adolescent behavior problems
The course of grieving in widows
Life outcome in college women
What is a functionalist emotion theory?
What is emotion regulation?
Messinger

5. Positive Emotion The Broaden and Build Hypothesis
Positive emotion perceptual and cognitive expansion
Frederickson (1998)
“ positive emotions build personal resources by fostering creative thinking, the readiness to take advantage of opportunities, the strengthening of social bonds, and the undoing of negative emotions.” Harker et al., 2001
Messinger

6. Positive Emotions Trigger Upward Spirals
Fredrickson & Joiner (2002)
Coping
Positive Affect
= 5 weeks
Messinger

7. One Mechanism: Undoing
Messinger

8. Facial expressions and outcomes
Convey emotion and orientation
Elicit emotion and behavior in others
Social referencing and the visual cliff
Smiling is contagious
But so is scowling
Messinger

9. Data Kindergarten Adolescent behavior Bereavement Year book photos
Discussion of intervention strategies
Messinger

10. Kindergarteners’ Family & School Photos
Cross-modality emotional communication
 Smile intensity in classroom & home
 Warm family touch & smile intensity
in classroom & home
 Total family touch & smile intensity, parent’s affect
Child-parent expressive similarity
 Father and child smile intensity
Facial emotion display as “thin slice” of temperament?
 Smile intensity in classroom (not home) & extraversion
~ Girls’ warm family touch & extraversion
Mother
Father
Child 
Girl
Boy 
Smiling
Boys = girls
Mothers > fathers
Fuccillo
- No significant r’s for effortful control or negative affect

11. Messinger

12. Messinger

13. Messinger

14. Adolescents Take an interactive IQ test
Show embarrassment, anger, fear with examiner
Related to teacher ratings of
Externalizing (aggression)
Internalizing (anxiety, withdrawal, somaticizing)
Messinger

15. Expressions by behavior rating
Why?
80th%ile. Higher % of their own expressions
Keltner et al., 1999
Messinger

16. Recently bereaved Talk about their loss at 6, 14, & 25 months
Angry facial expressions  Later grief
Duchenne (cheek-raise) laughers  Later
Higher emotional dissociation
Report better association with significant other
Viewed more positively by naïve observers
Why?
Messinger

17. Duchenne laughter and recovering from bereavement
Keltner et al., 1999
Messinger

18. Yearbook pictures
…and
life
Messinger

19. Smile intensity & other-reported personality
Messinger

20. Smile intensity and Observer Expected Interactions (n=114)
Observer Expectations
Positive emotional expression
Expected positive emotions
.70
Expected negative emotions
-.57
Approach-acceptance
.52
Messinger

21. Smile intensity and Life Outcomes
Positive expression
Controlling for
Attract./Social Desirability
Married by age 27
.19
.18/.16
Single into adulthood
-.20
-.18/.20
Ever divorced
.15
~.15/~.15
Personal Well-being
Age 21 (n=112)
.20
.20/.11
Age 27 (n=86)
.25
.26./.23
Age 43 (n=105)
.18
.19/12
Age 52 (n=101)
.27
.28/.24
Messinger

22. Messinger

23. Intervening with children’s emotions
Izard: Structural model and intervention

24. In children Emotion knowledge  Social skills
Unidirectional, .12,
Effect on social preference of others is through social skills
(Mostow et al)
What is emotional intelligence
Messinger

25. Emotion communication and understanding in childhood: A real-life problem
Saarni

26. Alternative views Functional Dynamic
Insight: Recognition of function of emotions and their flexibility in functioning
Regulating emotion to achieve goals
Difficulty: Use goals to interpret behavior but use behavior to infer goals
Dynamic
Insight: Recognition of interfacing role of multiple components in emotional process
Difficulty: Specifying process
Messinger

27. Functionalist theory
Emotion is the person’s attempt or readiness to establish, maintain, or change the relation between the person and the environment on matters of significance to that person (Saarni et al., 1998).
Emotion is associated with goal-attainment, social relationships, situational appraisals, action tendencies, self-understanding, self regulation, etc.
Messinger

28. Halloween Candy
Messinger

29. Critique of functionalism
Definition is overly broad
Circular reasoning
How do you measure goals?
What is a functionalist analysis of emotion in face-to-face play?
Measurement of impact of emotional signal
Similar to ethology
Messinger

30. Functionalist views Emotions come in families defined by these goals
not by facial expression, or brain activity
Messinger’s research is based on families of expressions and emotions
Functional research focus
socialization of emotional experience
acquisition of emotional competence (Saarni),
secondary emotions such as pride.
Messinger

31. Emotion regulation Modifying emotions to attain goals Sees emotions as
flexible not stereotypical
functional not disruptive
responsive not rigid
E.g., Impulse control, anger modulation, embarrassment, gift receipt.
Flows from functional perspective
See Thompson
Messinger

32. Critique of emotion regulation
Inhibition or maintenance/intensification?
Self or other regulation?
What’s emotion and what’s its regulation?
Does functionalism wish to unite concepts?
Is a regulated emotion the same emotion?
Avoid premature judgements of good emotion regulation before we know its normative development and how to measure its adequacy
Messinger

33. Emotion regulation Understanding emotions Gender socialization
Cultural emotion scripts
Regulation and coping
Empathy vs. sympathy
Dissembling
Messinger

34. Themes Understanding emotions: Developing complex accounts
Symbolizing internal experience
Self-awareness in guilt and shame
Multiple emotions: sequential and simultaneous
Messinger

35. Socialization and scripts
Family rules
High frequency emotion talk
Dysregulation caused by others’ anger and abuse
Boys’ anger; girls’ distress
Empathy vs. sympathy
Dissembling
Messinger