While the research interests of the lab in nonverbal communication are
very diverse, currently we are focusing on three lines of research that
attempt to understand the way emotions are presented and understood
nonverbally, as well as their effects on interpersonal outcomes. We have
briefly summarized these projects as follows
Ingroup/Outgroup Recognition
of Emotion,
Mixed Messages, and
Social Functions of Emotion
Displays.
INGROUP/OUTGROUP RECOGNITION OF EMOTION
At a broadest level, this line of research involves individual and cross-cultural differences in the communication and regulation of emotion. One recent project in this field was a large-scale meta-analytic review of the universality of emotion recognition, specifically the notion of an ingroup advantage of emotion recognition. Interestingly, this review found that happiness and anger showed the smallest ingroup advantage, suggesting an evolutionary role in emotion recognition. An experimental follow-up to this review conducted with a colleague in India examined specifically the effect of exposure to other cultures on the ingroup advantage.
Mixed messages are messages in which two or more channels of communication (e.g. verbal content and tone of voice) are in conflict. We have studied these messages in terms of how they affect productivity, creativity, and satisfaction in the workplace, as well as how they affect cognitive processes such as facial memory. Interestingly, results from this work are often counterintuitive. For example, mixed messages tend to elicit greater levels of productivity, satisfaction, and facial memory. Our current work focuses on determining the meta-message, or gestalt, that may be conveyed by specific types of messages. Specifically, we are investigating how mixed and consistent messages are used to express different levels of politeness and impoliteness.
SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF EMOTION DISPLAYS
We have recently been studying the interactional function played by the fear and anger expressions.
Specifically, we are interested in how the specific forms these expressions take relate to the way people
who show them are perceived by others. Currently we are looking at the implicit associations that may
exist between the fear and anger expressions and constructs of youth and maturity. We are also planning
to study the physiology of emotional expression recognition and how it can help us better understand the
processing and categorization of these expressions.