“So Happy I Could Shout!” and “So Happy I Could Cry!” Dimorphous expressions represent and communicate motivational aspects of positive emotions

ABSTRACT

Happiness can be expressed through smiles. Happiness can also be expressed through physical displays that without context, would appear to be sadness (tears, downward turned mouths, and crumpled body postures) and anger (clenched jaws, snarled lips, furrowed brows, and pumped fists). These seemingly incongruent displays of happiness, termed dimorphous expressions, we propose, represent and communicate expressers’ motivational orientations. When participants reported their own aggressive expressions in positive or negative contexts, their expressions represented positive or negative emotional experiences respectively, imbued with appetitive orientations (feelings of wanting to go). In contrast, reported sad expressions, in positive or negative contexts, represented positive and negative emotional experiences respectively, imbued with consummatory orientations (feelings of wanting to pause). In six additional experiments, participant observers interpreted that aggression displayed in positive contexts signalled happy-appetitive states, and sadness displayed in positive contexts signalled happy-consummatory states. Implications for the production and interpretation of emotion expressions are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion
• dimorphous expressions
• expression of emotion
• motivation
• nonverbal behaviour

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Please see Supplementary Materials for detailed method and results for all studies reported in this paper.

2 Underline is used in this manuscript to highlight changes that were made between conditions. Underline did not appear in any of the stimuli.

3 Some variables were collected for convergent validation, including intensity of emotion, arousal as conceptualised in regard to happiness (excited, and calm), dominance dimensions (powerful, and fragile), and drive for and savouring of rewards. These variables did provide convergent validity, but are not the central focus of this investigation, and are reported in detail in the Supplementary Materials section.