Differentiating Emotion Elicited and Deliberate Emotional Facial Expressions

This chapter addresses the differences between emotion elicited, which is spontaneous, and deliberate emotional facial expressions, specifically in relation to the dynamic features of the facial expressions that might differentiate the two types of display. The results regarding the dynamic parameters predicted to differ between spontaneous and deliberate expressions, onset time and offset time, were different for the two experiments. The results of Experiment 1 were not consistent with the hypotheses. The deliberate expressions in Experiment 2 were elicited by asking subjects to deceive an observer about their emotional state by masking it with an incongruent emotional expression. Generally, the data provides strong evidence for the notion that the irregularity of the expression differentiates spontaneous and deliberate happy expressions and tentative evidence for this difference in disgust expressions, while addressing some of the methodological concerns regarding previous research. The objective differences versus observers' Ratings are also discussed.