title: Categorical perception of facial expressions.
abstract: People universally recognize facial expressions of happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and perhaps, surprise, suggesting a perceptual mechanism tuned to the facial configuration displaying each emotion. Sets of drawings were generated by computer, each consisting of a series of faces differing by constant physical amounts, running from one emotional expression to another (or from one emotional expression to a neutral face). Subjects discriminated pairs of faces, then, in a separate task, categorized the emotion displayed by each. Faces within a category were discriminated more poorly than faces in different categories that differed by an equal physical amount. Thus emotional expressions, like colors and speech sounds, are perceived categorically, not as a direct reflection of their continuous physical properties.
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139.
authors.forename: N L
authors.initials: NL
authors.lastname: Etcoff
authors.forename: J J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Magee
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003142:Communication; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D014796:Visual Perception