william james' work provided the original basis for the facial feedback hypothesis.
william james' work provided the original basis for the facial feedback hypothesis.
who's work provided the original basis for the facial feedback hypothesis?
william james
facial feedback hypothesis









































the facial feedback hypothesis states that facial movement can influence emotional experience. for example, an individual who is forced to smile during a social event will actually come to find the event more of an enjoyable experience.









































section::::background.









































charles darwin was among the first to suggest that physiological changes caused by an emotion had a direct impact "on", rather than being just the consequence "of" that emotion. he wrote:
facial feedback hypothesis
originally, the facial feedback hypothesis studied the enhancing or suppressing effect of facial efference on emotion in the context of spontaneous, "real" emotions, using stimuli. this resulted in "the inability of research using spontaneous efference to separate correlation from causality". laird (1974) used a cover story (measuring muscular facial activity with electrodes) to induce particular facial muscles contraction in his participants without mentioning any emotional state. however, the higher funniness ratings of the cartoons obtained by those participants "tricked" into smiling may have been caused by their recognizing the muscular contraction and its corresponding emotion: the "self-perception mechanism", which laird (1974) thought was at the root of the facial feedback phenomenon. perceiving physiological changes, people "fill the blank" by feeling the corresponding emotion. in the original studies, laird had to exclude 16% (study 1) and 19% (study 2) of the participants as they had become aware of the physical and emotional connection during the study.
facial feedback hypothesis