Emotion category accessibility and the decoding of emotion from facial expression and context

EMOTION CATEGORY ACCESSIBILITY AND THE DECODING OF EMOTION FROM FAClAL EXPRESSION AND CONTEXT

Jose-Miguel Fernändez-Dols Harald Wal lbott Flor Sanchez

ABSTRACT: This paper explores the feasibility of three possible causes for the higher influence of expressive information compared to context information on the ascription of emotions: lack of biographical experience in situations described by the contextual information (Experiment 1), lack of instruction on categorizing contexts in terms of words that describe emotions in facial expressions (Experiment 2), and insufficient enhancement of the contextual source of information (Experiment 3). Experiments followed Wallbott's version (Wallbott, 1988) of Goodenough and Tinker's procedure (Goodenough & Tinker, 1931). Results of Experiments 1 and 3 suggest that the different weights of expression and context in the Goodenough and Tinker ascription task are not determined by inexperience or lack of differentiation of the contextual information with respect to the expression. According to Experi- ment 2, these differences might be due to subjects' lack of specific experience on categorizing contextual information in terms of emotions.

Basic research on the relationship between emotional expression and context has attempted to determine the influence of contextual information on the attribution of emotions based on expressions. The most offen used procedure (Goodenough & Tinker, 1931) involves simultaneous presentation of expression (photographs of facial emotional expressions) and context (verbal descriptions of emotion eliciting situations). Subjects have to decide which emotion such a combination su88ests. Ekman, Friesen, and Ellsworth (1972, 1982) have written the most influential review on this subject, pointing out the main virtues and flaws of these experiments. Ac-

The reported research was funded by the Spanish Govemment (CAICyT, PB85-226). We thank two anonymous reviewers of an earlier draft of this paper for their valuable comments and suggestions. All correspondence should be addressed to Jose-Miguel Femändez-Dols, Facultad de Psicologfa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, E28049 Spain.

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/ournal of Nonverbal Behavior 1.5(2), Summer 1991 ,, © 1991 Human Sciences Press, Inc, ' "107

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cording to these authors, the main achievement of the Goodenough-Tinker paradigm would be its control of the clarity of the stimuli. However, the lack of adequate sets of stimuli constitutes a major problem of the classic research on this subject. A set of stimuli should include a number of expressions displayed by different senders, and a collection of clear, simple and intense expressions.

Furthermore, Ekman, Friesen, and El tsworth (1982) have pointed out that another important research problem is "the specification of the particular cognitive mechanisms employed to resolve discrepant information between the face and the context" (p. 127). Another review that summarizes research with children (Camras, 1986), also mentions this need of in-depth research on the processes related to the "strength" of both sources.

An extensive replication of the Goodenough-Tinker experiment was performed by Frijda (1969), who introduced several improvements in the control of variables and analysis of data. His results suggested that "the final judgment seems to be some sort of weighted average of both cues with the highest weight going to expression" (Frijda, 1969). Experiments by Watson (1972), and Knudsen and Muzeraki (1983) found that the expression is generally more important than the context in the ascription of emotions.

Wallbott (1988) has recently performed additionai replications. His studies followed Ekman, Friesen, and EIIsworth's rnethodological recom- mendations. A relatively large set of expressions and contextual descriptions were selected by two independent groups of judges in order to ger clear, simple, and intense stimuli. Wallbott's results supported the view of the face as the most powerful source of information only if facial expressions were either Iow in intensity or ambiguous. A Spanish replication of Wallbott's experiment (Malio, Fernändez-Dols, & Wallbott, 1989) arrived at the same conclusions.

These results suggest a clear dominance of facial expression over contextual information. Nevertheless, despite these accomplishments, research on the Goodenough-Tinker paradigm has not provided a clear explanation of the cognitive processes that determine this dominance. Frijda (1969) developed a hypothetical model of emotion recognition, in which emotional meaning is first ascribed to the contextual information, and then to the expressive information. Finally, attribution of emotion depends on a comparison between the inferences based on both sources. If the sources are discrepant, the subject will either use one of several possible strategies (such as ignoring orte source), or will restart the process. Wallbott (1988) proposed that two parallel sub-processes are involved: one attributing emotional meaning to the context; the other one achieving the same for

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facial expression. These sub-processes would result in two "lists" of emotions with the emotion with highest intensity/probability attributed to facial or contextual sources at the top, followed by other ernotions with descend- ing intensity/probability. Next, the subject would have to integrate both "lists". These descriptions of integration strategies are sirnilar to Anderson's algebraic rnodels on the integration of information about personality traits (e.g., Anderson, 1965).

One alternate approach to the cognitive processes involved would consist of an actualized version of Bruner's (1957) concept of the "accessibility of categories" (e.g. Higgins, Rholes, & Jones, 1977; Bargh & Pi- etromonaco, 1982; Higgins & King, 1981). According to Higgins and King's rnodel (1981), the most general available information about a class of objects are categories. Several factors deterrnine the accessibility of a category at a given tirne: the subject's expectations about the occurrence of a category, the subject's motivation, the recent activation of the category in prior tasks, the previous frequent activation of the category, its salience, and its relation to accessible constructs, i.e., to other categories with sirnilar sernantical or pragmatical uses. Following this approach, recognition of emotion would rnean identifying the stirnulus as a particular case of a general category of emotion. In Goodenough and Tinker's para- digrn, the stirnulus is a cornbination of an expressive and a contextual source offen suggesting different categories, which rnight be of different accessibility. This article explores two alternate ways of considering the accessibility of emotional categories as a possible cause for the higher influence of expressive information in the ascription of ernotions. In Experi- ment 1 we considered whether previous biographical intense experience in the situation represented by the contextual information irnplied a rnore bal- anced influence of contextual and expressive information in the attribution of ernotions. Experiment 2 does not consider previous experience in the represented situation hut previous experience in the emotional categorization of situations by rneans of the verbal labels that are usually attributed to facial expressions.

A positive relationship between experience in the situation and intim ence of the context would irnply that the lack of influence of context rnight be caused by a lack of experience in the situation. A positive relationship between experience in the categorization of situations and the influence of context would irnply that the lack of influence of the context rnight be explained by subjects' lack of experience in applying these categories of emotion to situations instead of to facial expressions.

Finally, Experiment 3 considered an alternative interpretation of our results in the two previous studies . . . . .

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General Method

The three experiments that we will report followed Wallbott's version (1988, 1990) of the Goodenough-Tinker paradigm. Therefore, we will summarize the basic features of this method in order to avoid repetition. In these studies two control groups judged two samples of stimuli. One group had to judge the emotional context of a set of expressions on intensity scales of emotion. The second control group did the same for a set of ernotion,eliciting situations. The expressions were a selection from the series "Pictures of Facial Affect" (Ekman & Friesen, 1976). The data base of a large cross-national survey on emotional experience (Scherer, Wallbott, & Summerfield, 1986) provided the set of contextual descriptions. An attempt was made to select clear, simple, and intense stimuli. Eleven descriptions of contexts and the same number of photographs of expressions were ar- ranged in 33 combinations (11 each being congruent, discrepant, and ambiguous). Some examples for the situation descriptions used are the following: "The person is sitting in a car, which is driven very fast and rather light- heartedly by the driver. Suddenly, a wall of log appears, hut the car is not slowed down" (intense and unambiguous fear judgments). "The person had waited in a queue to buy a ticket for a concert she/he was looking forward to very rauch. Some people cut in to the queue and buy the last tickets available" (intense and unambiguous anger judgments). "The person receives a Iong leiter from a friend, from whom she/he had not heard for a Iong time, because the friend is living abroad now" (intense and unambiguous joy judgments).

The degree of congruency or discrepancy between expressions and contexts was calculated by correlating the distributions of the intensity judgments (averaged across judges) for facial expressions with the distributions for the contextual stimuli (also averaged across judges) across the emotion scales for each stimulus combination. A high correlation of judgments between a facial and a contextual stimulus meant that these stimuli provided a congruent combination. A negative correlation meant just the opposite. Pairs of stimuli with zero correlations indicated ambiguous combinations. Three groups of subjects judged the combinations of faces and contexts. Each group judged 11 of the 33 selected combinations. Again, subjects had to assign vatues of intensity along emotion scales.

The main procedure of analysis of the resuits was employed in the same way for congruent, ambiguous, and discrepant combinations by calculating the correlation between the distribution of the judgments for each combination and the distribution of the judgments for the context and the

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TABLE 1

Similarity of the Relative Dominance of Expressive and Contextual Information in Wallbott (1988) and Mallo et al. (1989)

Correlation

Expression Expression Context VS. VS. VS.

Context Combination Combination

Discrepant Combinations Spain a - .32 .75 .04 Germany b - .33 .82 - .05

Ambiguous Combinations Spain .11 .68 .58 Germany . I0 .77 .49

Consonant Combinations Spain .70 .89 .85 Germany .86 .94 .91

Note. Both sets of results am presented to indicate the high stability of effects across both samples of judges.

aData from Mallo et al. (1989) using Spanish subjects. bData from Wallbott (I 988) using German subjects.

face judged in isolation. If the correlation between the distribution of the judgments for the context and the distribution of the judgments for the combination was higher than the correlation between the judgments for facial expression and the judgments for the combination, then the context had a higher weight than the facial expression in subjects' judgments. If the correlations showed the opposite relationship, then the source with a higher weight would be facial expression.

Wallbott's results showed a clear predominance of facial information. In the discrepant combinations, i.e., when the distributions of the employed stimuli had negative correlations, the mean of the correlations between combination and context was nearly zero (-.05), whereas the mean of the correlation between facial expression and combination was very important (.85). In the ambiguous and congruent combinations there was an increase in the weight of the context (.49 (context) rs..77 (face) in the ambiguous ones, and .91 (context) vs..94 (face) in the congruent ones).

Mallo et al. (1989) replicated this study with Spanish subjects. The

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results were similar (see Table 1). The mean of the correlation between contextual information and the discrepant combinations was only .04, The relationship between expression and discrepant combinations was. 75. In the ambiguous combinations the correlations between combination and context was .58 (vs..68 in the case of expression) and in the congruent ones it was .85 (rs..89 for expressionL

Experiment 1: Experience with Emotion Eliciting Situations

In Experiment 1 we studied previous experiences of subjects with the situations that were employed as contextual information. If a subject does not have previous experience with a situation, the accessibility of the emotional categories for recognizing the situation might not be as powerful as the accessibility of emotional catesories for facial expression. The expressive predominance found in the Goodenough-Tinker paradigm might thus be explained in terms of differences in construct accesibility as a function of a subjects' lack of biographical experience with the respective situations. The first experiment aims at studying the effects of this variable which has not been considered by research in the field so rar.

Method

Subiects. Ninety-seven students of the Universidad Autonoma of Ma- drid took part in this study (83 females, 14 males). Due to problems in recruiting subjects, more fernales than males participated. But as Wallbott (1990) in a series of studies did not find any evidence of gender of judges to influence the relative weights of expression and context, this imbalance of genders was considered negligible hefe.

Procedure. The basic procedure was similar to the one described in Wallbott (1988; see above). For the selection of stimuli and the control of their clarity we empioyed the data of the previously described Spanish repl~cation. An important difference between this experiment and Wall- bott's (1988) and those of Mallo et al. (1989) concerned the number and type of combinations of faciat expression and context that were presented to subjects. In former experiments, congruent, ambiguous, and discrepant combinätions were employed. However, it is obvious that the most straightforward information: about expressive or contextual dominance comes from the discrepant combinations; therefore, in this study we employed only discrepant pairs.

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The study was conducted in two steps: The first questionnaire dealt with the previously mentioned 11 situations that were selected by Wallbott (1988). Its goal was to determine whether subjects had previous experience with these situations or very similar ones. The instructions were as follows: "The following pages describe situations that bring about emotions. Please read them carefully and answer the questions. Each question allows several options, please circle the appropriate one."

The first group of questions asked whether or not the subject had actu- ally experienced the situation. If the answer was affirmative, the subjects were asked to point out how many times they had experienced this situation, to rate the intensity of emotion they had experienced in this situation, and also to rate the degree of personal benefit or detriment caused by the situation (nine-point scales for each question).

Analysis of the subjects' responses showed that six situations did not discriminate, because either the majority of the subjects had not experienced the situation, or the event was too common. Therefore five situations were selected providing the best balance between the proportions of experienced and inexperienced subjects. These situations were "death of a pet"; "unfair behavior of a superior"; "nearness to being involved in a car accident"; "not being able to buy tickets for a concert because some people cut into the queue", and "receipt of news from a close friend abroad".

There wem 49 subjects who had experienced fewer than three of the situations; they constituted the "inexperienced group". On the other hand, 48 subjects who had experienced three or more situations were chosen for the "experienced group".

The second questionnaire was applied to the subjects one week later. It consisted of a set of discrepant combinations that the subjects had to judge. The questionnaire instructions and procedure (emotion scales, etc.) were identical to those of Mallo's et al. experiment. The subjects' task was to indicate the intensity of the perceived emotions on scales from 0 to 8. The emotion scales were joy, angel disgust, fear, surprise, sadness, shame, skepticism, and despair. Subjects had to judge a set of the discrepant combinations that were employed in Mallo's et al. experiment. How- ever, the content of the questionnaire was tailored for each subject (experienced vs. inexperienced) according to which situations allocated them to this category.

Thus, each subject had to judge three, four or five discrepant combinations. A subject, for example, who was classified as "inexperienced" because of not having experienced three, four or live situations of questionnaire I, had to only judge these three, four or five situations in their respective discrepant combinations with an expression. Subjects who were

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TABLE 2

Relative Dominance of the Expressive and the Contextual Information in Experienced and Inexperienced Subjects

Expression Context VS. VS.

Combination Combination Correlation r z r z t

Unexperienced Ss. .83 1.39 .02 .02 4.22*

Experienced Ss. .78 1.19 .04 .01 5.63**

Note. Corretations were transforrned to z scores before calculating averages and paired samples t-tests comparing the influence of expression and context in each group.

*p < .05. **p < .01.

classified as "experienced" according to questionnaire 1 criteria, had to judge three, four or five combinations of a discrepant expression and the situations they had undergone. On the average, subjects in the "experienced", as well as in the "unexperienced" group responded to the same number of combinations.

Resul~

Responses of the inexperienced and the experienced groups were an- alyzed by means of the usual procedure. Foliowing Wallbott (1988) the weight of context and expression for each of the 5 combinations was calculated via the correlations (across the nine emotion scales) between the average distribution of emotion intensities across judges for each combination and the average distribution of emotion intensities for the contextual and expressive information when presented in isolation (see Table 2). The results did not show any improvement of the contextual influence on the judgments of the subjects, and they are similar to the data observed in Mallo et al. (1989) and in Wallbott (1988). Both the correlation between expression and combinations and the correlations between context and combinations did not differ statistically and are almost identical for experienced (.78 for expression, .04 for context) and unexperienced subjects (.83 for expression, .02 for context), and very similar to the reference data (see Table 1). In general, again a dominance of facial expression information over context information can be observed.

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Conclusions

The results of this experiment do not provide support for the impact of previous biographical experience. The accessibility of emotional categories does not seem to be related to previous Iong-term experience. Of course, more research is necessary at this point. A difficult but interesting study would consist of selecting experienced subjects with more than one previous experience in these situations. Repetition of emotional experiences might determine some kind of "chronic accessibility" to several constructs related to context categorization (Bargh & Pietromonaco, 1982). However, our results indicate that such extreme individual differences in experience may be scarce. None of our subjects reported to have experienced the situations of the first questionnaire more than one or two times.

It should be stressed that the "experience" variable as used here is rather restrictive because subjects were not allowed to report vicarious experiences or confrontation with the situations in the media. On the other hand, the manipulation is "weak" because we do not know whether subjects, in fact, only reported real experiences, or whether some subjects may have encountered the situations, but did not react emotionally. In addition, individual differences might also interfere (here subjects in both groups were only matched for age, but not for other variables, like for instance, "emotion traits", see Malatesta, Fiore, & Messina, 1987). Further studies with more elaborate methods to access individual experience with emotional situations might be necessary.

However, present data indicate that a lack of previous personal experience (as operationalized hefe) does not seem to be the cause of the lack of influence of the context in the Goodenough-Tinker paradigm.

Experiment 2: Experience in Categorizing Contexts

One important source of category accessibility is instruction and formal or informal learning. Previous instruction or immediate experience in a task helps to generate expectations about categories to be used in future similar settings. Moreover, previous immediate experience in the categorization of an event implies frequent activation or stronger relationships with other close categories that also facilitate category accessibility (cf., Higgins & King, 1981),

According to other studies (Fernändez-Dols & Jimenez, 1986; Fer- nändez-Dols, 1988; Gonzalez, 1989) contextual information has a higher influence on judgments if the attribution criterion is defined in terms

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of plans of behavior with an emotional content. Moreover, spontaneous descriptions of emotion eliciting situations might be encoded in terms of basic structures of means-goals related to emotions.

This evidence suggests that another possible cause for the different weights of context and expression in the Goodenough-Tinker paradigm might be subjects' lack of experience in categorizing contextual information in terms of words that describe basic emotions in facial expressions. In order to test this hypothesis, we gave subjects the opportunity to attribute basic emotion categories, which are usually employed to categorize expressions, to contexts. We expected that such imrnediate experience in the task of categorization would increase the influence of context.

Two different versions of this experiment are reported hefe. It has al- ready been mentioned that the Mallo et al. study itself was a successful replication of the Wallbott (1988) data, and thus can be considered to constitute a valid and stable baseline for the relative weights of expression and context within the paradigm used. Therefore, in the first version of the experiment (Experiment 2a) to be presented here, the Mallo et al. (1989) data were used as a "reference group". As the basic procedures to be used as weil as the subject population (Spanish university students) were identical to the Mallo et al. study, we considered this a legitimate procedure for judgment studies. Furthermore, Mallo et al. data were replicatect once in the control group of the second version of this experiment (Experiment 2b) in order to guarantee our conclusions.

Therefore, the methods of both versions of Experiment 2 are com- pletely identical, except that in the first one we made use of Mal,lo's et al. data as reference, and in the second version the reference data came from subjects assigned to the control group.

Me~od

Subjects. Psychology students (63 females, 14 males) of the Univer- sidad Autonoma de Madrid participated in the two versions of this experiment; 37 (25 females, 12 males) participated in Experiment 2a. In Experi- ment 2b, the control group consisted of 20 females, and 18 femates and 2 males constituted the experimental group.

Procedure. Subjects (except for the control group)had to answer a questionnaire, presenting the five situations of Experiment 1. Each page of the questionnaire included the description of one of the five situations at the top, and reproductions of nine facial expressions at the bottom. The task consisted of determining the emotional content of the context in a way

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as similar as possible to the way for determining the emotional content of expressions with similar emotional information. Subjects were invited not only to determine the emotional content of the context by means of the same emotion scales as in the previous experiments, but to select one of the emotional expressions fitting the verbal labels employed to describe the situation. Therefore, subjects were trained for categorizing contextual information in terrns of the same words that would describe basic emotions in facial expressions.

Subjects were not informed at that time about the second part of the experiment. However, after completing the questionnaire they were invited to participate in a second study. The second questionnaire, adminis- tered at least 24 hours later, included all five situations from the first questionnaire, in discrepant combinations with facial expressions. Subjects had to judge these stimuli according to the usual procedure by assigning emotion intensity judgments to the combinations. The control group of Experi- ment 2b only performed this task.

Results

The analysis consisted again of calculating the correlations of expression-combination and context-combination. As in our previous experiment, we employed distributions for the context judgments and the expression judgments in isolation that had been gathered in Mallo et al. (1989).

Table 3 shows the correlations between the judgments for the expression alone, judgments for the combination, and the correlations between the context-alone judgments and the combinations. This time, the weight of the context has increased as rauch in the first version of this experiment (.04 in the reference group vs..38 in the experimental condition) as in the second one (.23 in the control group vs..51 in the experimental condition), whereas expression has lost some influence (.75 vs..50; and .62 vs. .50). The reference and the control group results showed a clear and significant predominance of expressive information: .75 rs..04 in Mallo et al., and .62 vs..23 in the control group. However, in both experimental groups there was no predominance of facial expression over the contextual information, and the difference between the predictive power of both sources was not significant (.50 vs..38, and .50 vs..51).

Conclusions

This reversal of the usual trend of results in both versions of this experiment seems to suggest that the nature of the categorization procedure

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TABLE 3

Relative Dominance of the Expressive and the Contextual Information in Subjects with Immediate Experience on Context Categorization


Combination Combination Correlation r z r z t

Experiment 2a: Reference Data a .75 1.24 .04 .04 4.88** Experienced Ss. .50 .61 .38 .49 0.35

Experiment 2b: Contro| Group .62 .79 .23 .26 4.50* Experienced Ss. .50 .57 .51 .66 -0 .36

Note. Correlations were transformed to z scores before calculating averages and paired samples t-tests comparing the influnece of expression and context in each group.

aData from Mallo et al. 1989. *p < .05. **p < .01.

could be responsible for the common trend of results that has been reported in research on the relationship between expression and context. Expressive dominance in the Goodenough-Tinker paradigm might be caused by important differences between the face and the context in construct accessibility. When a previous application of the categories of emotional ascription in facial expressions has been performed by subjects, context seems to increase its influence on the subjects' final judgments.

Experiment 3: Order of Presentation

Results of Experiment 2 suggest that, in fact, previous experience of subjects in emotional categorization of contexts produces a higher influence of contextual information in the attribution of emotion to discrepant combinations of expression and context. However, an alternative interpretation of these results would be that our experimental procedure has enhanced the importance of contextual sources and centered subjects' attention on this information. Our third study aimed at testing this hypothesis: Does an enhancement of the contextual stimuli by a procedure that does not imply

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previous learning (i.e. by manipulating the order of presentation of information) irnprove the ascription of the emotional content of the context?

The usual method of displaying the facial and the contextual information consists of presenting both stimuli simultaneously. In our experiment we employed the two possible sequential orders: first contexts and then expression, and vice versa. Three possible effects of the manipulation were considered:

(1) an increase in the weight of the context in both conditions. (2) An increase of the context through a primacy effect, i.e., an increase

of the weight of the context when it was presented before. (3) An increase of the context through a recency effect, i.e., an increase

of the weight of the context when it was presented afterwards. The procedure, stimuli, and subjects' background in this experiment

were identical to the Mallo et al. study (1989); therefore Mallo's et al. data are considered as an additional reference.

Method

Subjects. Forty-two students of the Universidad Autonoma of Madrid participated. Each sub-sample included was about half males and half females.

Procedure. The photographs (expressive information) and descriptions (context information) were displayed via slides. Each stimulus (photographs of facial expression and verbal descriptions of a situation) was presented for 15 seconds. Therefore, a complete presentation of a combination lasted 30 seconds. Two groups of 21 subjects judged the combinations. For the first group the expressions were presented before the situation description; for the second group the opposite order was introduced. The two groups of 21 subjects were divided into subgroups of seven subjects each. Each sub- group judged a different set of combinations (11 of 33, selected at ran- dom).

For each combination in each condition the judgments on the nine emotion scales were averaged across judges. The analysis again consisted of calculating the correlations expressions-combination and context-combination. We employed distributions for the context judgments and the expression judgments in isolation that had been gathered in Mallo et al. (1989). An increase in the influence to the contextual source would imply a higher correlation between the isolated contextual information and the context.

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TABLE 4

Relative Deminance of the Expressive and the ~Contextual ~formation Depending on Relative Discrepancy/Consonance of Partial lnformaEion

and the Modeof Presentation


Combination Combination Correlation r z r z

Expression followed by Context Discrepant Combinations .74 1.30 .04 .04 Ambiguous Combinations .75 1.33 .44 .60 Consonant Combinations .90 1.81 .74 1.25

F (dl = 2,30) 1.63 1 I. 74** Context followed by Expression

Discrepant Combinations .65 .99 .06 .10 Ambiguous Combinations .70 1.05 .51 .67 Consonant Combinations .90 1.82 .82 1.33

F (dl = 2,30) 5.62"* ]7.02"*

Note. Correlations were transformed to z scores before calculating averages and ANOVAs. *p < .05. **p < .01.

Resul~

Table 4 shows the ANOVA-results of comparin• the cormlations for the discrepant, ambiguous, and consonant combinations within the sample (both for the computation of averaged correlations and for the ANOVAs correlation coefficients were subjected to a z transformatión). The results indicate that the weight of the context increased with the increasing consonance of combinations (see Table 4). This result can be observed across both conditions (Expression-Context, and ContextrExpression) and also in Mallo's et al. data (see Table 1 ). The correlations both for expression/combination and for context/combination did not differ significantly across the presentation conditions. In fact, the average correlations were nearly identical across order of presentation conditions (for expression/combination .80, .75, and for contexlYcombination .41, and .46). On the other ~hand, the results dealing with the different weights of the context depending on consonance/discrepancy of combinations are totally independent of the

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conditions of presentation, as no significant interactions between both factors were observed.

Conclusions

These results support the interpretation of data in Experiment 2 as the result of a specific learning on the categorization of contextual information throughout the verbal labels employed for faces. Simple enhancement or differentiation of contextual information with respect to the expression did not change the relative weights of context and of facial expression. Differ- ences between the results of Experiment 2 and previous studies might not be caused by how contextual information is presented to the subjects but by how subjects process both kinds of information according their previous experience on the emotional categorization of both kinds of stimuli.

General Discussion

The results of Experiment 1 suggest that the different weights of expression and context in the Goodenough and Tinker ascription task are not determined by factors like a lack of empathic understanding because of inexperience with the situations. Furthermore, our results of Experiment 2 indicate that the key to the often observed differences might reside in the categories that people use for the ascription of emotional content of faces and situations.

Contexts convey emotional meaning hut they probably do not transmit emotional messages the same way as a face does. Facial expressions, because of their iconicity, seem to be more suitable than context for criteria of emotion altribution related to words (cf. Russell, 1989). On the other hand, contextual information may be identified easier if subjects use other ascription procedures (Frijda, 1969; Fernändez-Dols, Mallo, & Carrera, 1989). This suggests one plausible explanation for the failure to find evidence that biographical experience had any effect in Experiment 1. The kind of categories that people use to encode everyday emotional situations are not the same as those they use to categorize faces. We have to point out again that research on emotion recognition is rooted in the study of facial expressions and this origin has determined a lack of attention to the peculiarities of contextual information.

Whereas facial expression is a display with very specific communicative functions that have been developed through evolution, context has no explicit communicative function. Contexts are events with multiple mean-

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ings. The communicative value of a context seems to need a more active attitude of the observer. The subject has to search for clues that are related to a specific emotion and this process is probably not performed in terms of emotion words but in terms of plans of action that imply emotions (Frijda, 1969; Fridlund, in press; Srnith, 1977). Additional research should clarify the usefulness of this approach. In any case, it seems clear that future studies employing the Goodenoußh-Tinker paradigm should consider that context information may become irnportant, if other judgment tasks were used, or if observers are "trained" to assign emotion words to situations.

It is conceivable that the studies presented here did not manipulate three cognitive mechanisms separately (namely prior experience with contexts, prior practice in categorizing contexts, and attentiveness) but that all operated to enhance context clarity. On the other hand, the differential results found in Experiment 2 (compared to Experiment 1 and 3) indicate that, in fact, different mechanisms were involved.

Finally, it should be stressed, that in the tradition of the Goodenough- Tinker paradigm, static photographs of facial expressions and verbal descriptions of emotion eliciting situations were employed. Photographs of faces, especially of very prototypical emotional expressions, as used here, may enhance iconicity of facial expression, and thus should result in especially large weights of expression as compared to context. On the other hand, given these constraints of the paradi•m, any finding of context influ- ences on judgments seems important. Of course this should not preclude additional studies using more ecologically valid stimuli, like video clips of facial expressions (ideally less prototypical ones) and situations. Experi- ments with such stimuli may be less easily achieved, hut they should shed additional light on the issues raised here.

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Emotion category accessibility and the decoding of emotion from facial expression and context

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