Bodily expression of emotion

TLDR

The extent to which body movements and postures reflect specific emotions remains contested, with some studies supporting specificity and others suggesting they only indicate emotional intensity. This study seeks to demonstrate that body movements and postures can be specific to certain emotions. The authors analyzed 224 video recordings of actors portraying 14 emotions using scenario-based performances and coded for body movements and postures. Results show that while some emotion‑specific movement and posture patterns exist, differences are largely attributable to activation level, and actor‑specific habits are pronounced yet largely independent of emotion. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract

The question whether body movements and body postures are indicative of specific emotions is a matter of debate. While some studies have found evidence for specific body movements accompanying specific emotions, others indicate that movement behavior (aside from facial expression) may be only indicative of the quantity (intensity) of emotion, but not of its quality. The study reported here is an attempt to demonstrate that body movements and postures to some degree are specific for certain emotions. A sample of 224 video takes, in which actors and actresses portrayed the emotions of elated joy, happiness, sadness, despair, fear, terror, cold anger, hot anger, disgust, contempt, shame, guilt, pride, and boredom via a scenario approach, was analyzed using coding schemata for the analysis of body movements and postures. Results indicate that some emotion-specific movement and posture characteristics seem to exist, but that for body movements differences between emotions can be partly explained by the dimension of activation. While encoder (actor) differences are rather pronounced with respect to specific movement and posture habits, these differences are largely independent from the emotion-specific differences found. The results are discussed with respect to emotion-specific discrete expression models in contrast to dimensional models of emotion encoding. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.