How does facial feedback modulate emotional experience?

Abstract

Contracting muscles involved in facial expressions (e.g. smiling or frowning) can make emotions more intense, even when unaware one is modifying expression [e.g. Strack, F., Martin, L., & Stepper, S. (1988). Inhibiting and facilitating conditions of the human smile: A non-obtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(5), 768-777]. However, it is unresolved whether and how inhibiting facial expressions might weaken emotional experience. In the present study, 142 participants watched positive and negative video clips while either inhibiting their facial expressions or not. When hypothesis awareness and effects of distraction were experimentally controlled, inhibiting facial expressions weakened some emotional experiences. These findings provide new insight into ways that inhibition of facial expression can affect emotional experience: the link is not dependent on experimental demand, lay theories about connections between expression and experience, or the distraction involved in inhibiting one's expressions. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.