Putting Facial Expressions Back in Context

Abstract

Imagine yourself walking alone down a dark alley after midnight. Suddenly, you freeze. The man seen in Figure 11.1 is standing straight ahead of you. In a split second, you recognize the anger so strongly evident by the expression on his face and by his tightly clenched fist. Terrified, you turn around, running for your life. Two long minutes later, you are safe in the main street. Admittedly, this scenario might seem to be taken from yet another rejected Hollywood script, and such an event would certainly prove quite rare in our everyday life. Nevertheless, it captures an essential but seemingly forgotten truth, namely, that facial expressions are typically perceived in a rich context (Russell, 2003; Trope, 1986). In our everyday experiences, angry faces might be accompanied by clenched fists, sad faces are more frequent at funerals than at weddings, and disgusted faces seem to be paired with that unidentified lump of mold growing at the back of our refrigerator. From an evolutionary standpoint, it seems safe to assume that our ancestors had no exposure to isolated facial expres-