Interactions Between Faces and Visual Context in Emotion Perception: A Meta-Analysis

Long-standing theories argue that we primarily perceive others’ emotions through facial expressions. However, compelling evidence shows other visual context, such as body posture or scenes, influences emotions perceived from faces and vice versa. We used meta-analysis to synthesise and quantify these effects for the first time, testing if faces have primacy over context. Both context and faces were found to have large effects on each other in emotion perception. Effects were larger for emotionally incongruent than congruent pairings and were moderated by how clearly stimuli signalled the target emotion. Once these factors were accounted for, faces were no more influential in emotion perception than other types of visual context. Future research should account for emotional congruency and signal clarity.