Facial Feedback on the Perception and Memory for Emotional Faces

Our investigation explores the facial feedback hypothesis in relation to the perception and memory of emotional faces. In Experiment 1, participants rated the valence of angry, neutral, and happy faces while vertically holding a pen either between their teeth (smile-facilitating condition) or between their lips (smile-inhibiting condition). Results indicated that participants in the teeth condition rated happy faces more positively than participants in the lips condition, while no difference was found for angry and neutral faces. Moreover, reaction times for the evaluation of angry faces were longer than the ones for neutral and happy faces. Experiment 2 assessed long-term memory for angry, neutral, and happy faces. During encoding, participants saw the same faces as in Experiment 1. During recognition, they had to select the previously seen faces from a set containing target and filler faces while holding a pen either between their teeth or their lips. Results indicated no significant differences both for accuracy and recognition times between the two groups. The results revealed better memory performance for angry faces compared to neutral and happy ones, regardless of the pen-in-mouth condition. Taken together, these findings suggest that this procedure influences the perception of happy faces only, while the manipulation had no significant effect on memory. Interestingly, angry faces required more time to be evaluated in Experiment 1 and were recognized more accurately in Experiment 2.