Smile to see the forest: Facially expressed positive emotions broaden cognition

Abstract

The broaden hypothesis, part of Fredrickson's (1998, 2001) broaden-and-build theory, proposes that positive emotions lead to broadened cognitive states. Here, we present evidence that cognitive broadening can be produced by frequent facial expressions of positive emotion. Additionally, we present a novel method of using facial electromyography (EMG) to discriminate between Duchenne (genuine) and non-Duchenne (non-genuine) smiles. Across experiments, Duchenne smiles occurred more frequently during positive emotion inductions than neutral or negative inductions. Across experiments, Duchenne smiles correlated with self-reports of specific positive emotions. In Experiment 1, high frequencies of Duchenne smiles predicted increased attentional breadth on a global–local visual processing task. In Experiment 2, high frequencies of Duchenne smiles predicted increased attentional flexibility on a covert attentional orienting task. These data underscore the value of using multiple methods to measure emotional experience in studies of emotion and cognition.

Keywords:

• Broaden-and-build theory
• Positive emotion
• Duchenne smile
• Attentional orienting
• Global local
• Holistic perception

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by grants awarded from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH53971 and MH59615) and by Templeton Positive Psychology Prize (2000) awarded to BLF by the American Psychological Association.

We'd like to thank Tor Wager and Matthew Keller for their contribution to early data collection and analyses.

Notes

¹In Ekman, Friesen, and O'Sullivan (1988) they use the term “felt smiles” instead of Duchenne smiles. In Ekman, Davidson, and Friesen (1990), the term is changed to “enjoyment smiles”. In Frank, Ekman, and Friesen (1993) the terms “enjoyment smile” and “smile with Duchenne's marker” are used. Throughout this paper we will use the term “Duchenne smile”

²In order to explore whether dispositional affect had different effects on facial activity for positive or negative inductions, we conducted additional analyses on the two positive inductions (joy, content) collapsed together (N=46) and the two negative inductions (anger, sadness) collapsed together (N=44). For the positive emotion inductions, Duchenne smiles were correlated with trait levels of extraversion (r=.39, p<.02) and openness to new experience (r=.36, p<.02). Baseline positive affect and the remaining measures of dispositional affect were not correlated with Duchenne smiles during the positive emotion inductions. Unexpectedly, baseline levels of negative affect were correlated with frequencies of Duchenne smiles during the negative emotion inductions (r=.40, p<.02). No significant correlations emerged for any measures of dispositional affect with non-Duchenne smiles or furrowed brows during the positive or the negative inductions. Although the relatively small sample size of the neutral condition makes correlations more prone to error, results from the neutral induction were similar to negative inductions, with higher levels of baseline negative affect being correlated with more Duchenne smiles during the neutral induction

³In order to explore whether changes in attentional scope were correlated with the frequency of Duchenne smiles during either positive or negative emotion inductions, we conducted separate analyses for the positive and negative emotion inductions. Restricting analyses to the positive emotion inductions, Duchenne smiles remained correlated with global bias (r=−.48, p<.001) and global target recognition (r=−.36, p<.02). However, when analyses were restricted to the negative emotion inductions, Duchenne smiles were not correlated with changes in attentional scope. This is not surprising due to the fact that Duchenne smiles rarely occurred during the negative emotion inductions

⁴Quite unexpectedly, we also found that participants whose moods were more negative at the start of the experiment were more likely to smile during a negative emotion induction. It is unclear why this should be the case. However, we could speculate that perhaps these participants may have experienced some type of contrast effect. For instance, participants in a bad mood may have found the anger-induction video slightly enjoyable

⁵The Velten statements were modified from the original Velten statements. Eighteen of the neutral statements and 24 of the elation statements were from the original Velten (1968) set. The remaining seven neutral statements and one elation statement were from Seibert and Ellis (1991). All of the anger statements were from Engebretson, Sirota, Niaura, Edwards, and Brown (1999). We carefully selected those elation and anger statements that did not specifically reference attentional capabilities, or cognitive effort. For the neutral statements, we omitted those statements that were concerned with geographical information, so as to not prime participants with cues that called their attention to a broadened perspective of their environment

⁶As with Experiment 1, muscle activation thresholds were manually adjusted for approximately 15% of participants because of unusable or unstable physiological baselines. These errors in the physiological baseline were due to equipment failures or to muscle artefacts produced by participants failing to follow instructions to sit calmly during the baseline