Replication: Influence of Context on Emotion Perception in Facial Expressions

Accurate facial emotion perception during social interactions facilitates personal well-being and improves social skills such as empathy and social appraisal (Manstead et al., 1999). In the present study, we attempted to replicate this effect. Participants were presented with an image depicting a face that has been identified by Matsumoto and Ekman (1988) as a universal facial expression of "fear." The expression is characterized by distinct features which collectively signal a state of apprehension or distress across diverse cultural contexts. Then participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: congruent, incongruent, or no context scenarios. The congruent context scenario suggested the face expressed fear whereas the incongruent scenario suggested the face expressed anger. Participants selected the emotion they felt was expressed by the face in the picture. We expected the congruent and no-context groups to choose fear as the expression more often than the incongruent group. A 1-way ANOVA between the 3 groups found a significant effect, F(2, 42) = 38.50, p < .001, eta(2)(p ) = .64. Congruent and no-context groups chose fear as the facial expression significantly more often, thereby confirming our hypothesis and replicating previous findings. The effect of context on emotion perception is strong and replicable, suggesting that context plays an important role in emotion perception despite the universality of facial expressions.