Emotional Behavior

Very few everyday interactions are bereft of all emotion such that even trivial interactions involve at least a friendly smile or some other sign of affect. Understanding and appropriately reacting to these emotional signals is a necessary skill for the successful navigation of the social environment. From an observer-oriented perspective, the term “emotional behavior” refers to overt (observable) behaviors that lead observers to conclude that the expresser experiences an emotion. The information provided by emotional behaviors includes, next to the internal state of the expresser, information about what the expresser is likely to do in the situation (action tendencies); information about the antecedent situation implied by the appraisal patterns associated with specific emotions; information about the expresser’s values, motivations, and character as well as information about what the expresser wants the observers to do (appeals). As such, emotional behaviors provide social information that can be used by observers to navigate their social environment. Notably, even though emotional behavior can be meaningfully decoded from contextless depictions of expressive behavior, in everyday life, emotional behavior is interpreted within a given cultural and social context. The use of context information allows observers to employ perspective taking in order to actively make sense of the often ambiguous or blended expressions seen in naturalistic situations. Future research needs to focus on the means of classifying contexts and to better understand how context and expressive behavior interact to inform the observer. Further, even though much of the literature on emotional behavior focuses on facial expressions, emotions are also signaled by the voice, by posture, and even through changes in pupil size or through touch. Expanding the knowledge regarding these sources of emotion communication is another challenge for future research.