Abstract
Older adults have poor recognition of isolated facial expressions, yet outside the lab, such faces are typically perceived with contextual expressive bodies. In fact, recent work suggests that real-life facial expressions may be ambiguous while contextual information such as body language may be more diagnostic for decoding emotions. We examined the recognition of emotion from incongruent face-body composites and found that compared to young adults, older adults gave the body far more weight when recognizing emotion. These results are consistent with a social-expertise view and suggest that in real-life, older adults may employ an advantageous holistic approach to emotion perception.
| Original language | American English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 660-666 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Psychology and Aging |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant 1140/13) to Hillel Aviezer and by a European Union Career Integration Grant (Grant 618597) to Hillel Aviezer. A preliminary data report of these findings was presented as a poster by Yasmin Abo Foul at the International Convention of Psychological Science, Vienna, Austria (ICPS: 23-25 March 2017). We thank Omri Hadar for his skillful help in running the experiment.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Author(s).
Keywords
- Body language
- Context
- Emotional integration
- Facial expression
- Incongruent emotions