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

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 Experiment 2, these differences might be due to subjects' lack of specific experience on categorizing contextual information in terms of emotions. © 1991 Human Sciences Press, Inc.