SOLUTION: facial expressions of emotions | My Assignment Tutor

Perceptud and Motor Skills,1983, 57, 683-686. @ Perceptual and Motor Skills 1983ACCURACY AND LATENCY OF JUDGMENTOF FACIAL EXPRESSIONS OF EMOTIONS1GILLES KIROUAC AND FRANCOIS Y. DORfiUniversitC LuualSummary.-The aim of the experiment was to study the relation betweenaccuracy of judgment of facial expressions of emotions and time for judgment.The results for 34 college students confirmed previous data showing high performance in identification of all emotions, although there were some importantdifferences between emotions. Also, times for judgment were longer for theemotions which were more difficult to identify.Empirical data have recently indicated that human subjects can accuratelyand reliably identify specific and fundamental emotions as they are expressedin facial stimuli (Ekman, 1982; Ekman & Oster, 1979; Izard, 1971, 1977).Numerous authors have even concluded that this is a universal or pan-culturalfeature of human functioning (Bouchet, 1979; Ekman, 1982; Shimoda, Arg~le,& Ricci-Bitti, 1978). However, some studies have reported consistent sexdifferences in the encoding and decoding ability of nonverbal signals, includingfacial expressions of emotions (Hall, 1978). As a rule, female subjects havebetter performances than males. In addition, in most experiments, the variousemotions did not receive equivalent recognition levels (Boucher & Carlson,1980; Ekman, 1982; Kirouac & Dork, 1982), and fear is more difficult toidentify than any other emotion.The present experiment assessed these sex and emotion differences bymeasuring two indices of the efficiency of facial recognition, accuracy andlatency of judgment. It should be emphasized that latency of judgment andits relationship with accuracy have not been investigated in the past.METHODSubjectsThe sample of 34 university students, 18 females and 16 males, wereFrench-speaking citizens of Quebec. They were volunteers and received $3.00CAN for their participation.MaterialThe facial stimuli were Ekman’s Picturer of Facial Affect ( 1976). Allslides were used except the neutral ones. Those 96 slides represent 14 Caucasian adults from the United States, six men and eight women, displayingsix fundamental emotions. The frequency of the stimuli is as follows: happi-‘This research was supported by Grant EQ-1717 from Fonds FCAC (Gouvernement duQuebec). The authors are grateful to Mr. Marius Morin and Pierre Boivin for theircooperation in the conduct of the study. Reprint requests should be sent to the firstauthor, Ecole de psychologie, Tour F.-A. Savard, UniversitC Laval, Quebec, QuC., CanadaG l K 7P4.684 G. KIROUAC & F. Y. DORBness ( 18), surprise (14), fear ( I S ) , sadness ( 17), disgust (15) and anger( 17). A micro-computer (Rockwell) and an event-recorder were used toregister the emotions selected by the subjects and to measure the latency ofthese judgments. The event-recorder was a panel of seven keys, one controlled the onset of the slides and the six others identified the six fundamentalemotions.ProcedureThe subjects had to press the “control” key to release the presentation ofthe next slide. They observed the facial stimulus and once their judgment wasmade, they selected by a pressure on one of the six “identification” keys, theword which best described the emotional expression they had seen. Thisresponse and its latency (as measured by the duration between the pressureson the “control” and on the “identification” keys) were recorded. At thebeginning of the experiment, the subjects were familiarized with the task bya series of 10 preliminary trials.RESULTSAs shown in Table 1 the judgments of facial stimuli were highly accurateover-all. Happiness received the highest judgment rates whereas fear receivedthe lowest. These accuracy data were submitted to a two-way analysis ofvariance (sex X emotion) with repeated measures on the last factor. Theanalysis indicated a significant effect of sex (F = 4.24, df = 1/32, p