THESIS
2014
Abstract
What messages does a face convey? The universality thesis of facial expressions
suggests that emotions are the only messages conveyed by facial expressions. Yet, there has
always been controversy over this proposition. Previous studies have shown that facial
expressions may also convey action tendencies, situation appraisals and social messages. In
this thesis project, I critically examined the universality thesis of facial expressions by
exploring the messages conveyed by faces at different levels of processing. Offline (Study 1:
forced-choice survey; Study 2: free-labeling survey) and online (Study 3: response time
experiments) methods were both used, and responses were found to vary across methods.
When asked to match facial expressions with a list of messages (Study 1), part...[
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What messages does a face convey? The universality thesis of facial expressions
suggests that emotions are the only messages conveyed by facial expressions. Yet, there has
always been controversy over this proposition. Previous studies have shown that facial
expressions may also convey action tendencies, situation appraisals and social messages. In
this thesis project, I critically examined the universality thesis of facial expressions by
exploring the messages conveyed by faces at different levels of processing. Offline (Study 1:
forced-choice survey; Study 2: free-labeling survey) and online (Study 3: response time
experiments) methods were both used, and responses were found to vary across methods.
When asked to match facial expressions with a list of messages (Study 1), participants tended
to match emotions with facial expressions. When asked to freely label facial expressions
(Study 2), participants were inclined to give situation appraisal responses. While emotion
message and situation appraisal were the modal responses in Studies 1 and 2, action tendency
and situation appraisal were found to be the first activated mental representations in response
time experiments (Study 3). Taken together, the results suggest that faces convey multiple
messages at different levels of processing, namely emotion messages, situation appraisals and
action tendencies. In addition, participants adopted a top-down approach (moving from a
general category to a specific component) in associating messages with facial expressions
when processing was at a conscious level, and a bottom-up approach (moving from a specific component to a general category) when processing was automatic.
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