Body Cues, Not Facial Expressions, Discriminate Between Intense Positive and Negative Emotions

Abstract

Joy or Pain? Face recognition and processing are so completely central to human social interactions that these functions are supported by specialized regions in the brain. One of the fundamental aspects being processed is emotion, particularly whether the emotion being expressed is positive or negative. Nevertheless, neuroimaging studies have documented that perceiving opposite emotions often activates the same or overlapping regions. Aviezer et al. (p. 1225 ) report that the recognition of positive versus negative emotions actually relies on information communicated by the body—the extent to which perceivers identified joy versus grief in composite figures was driven by whether the body came from a joyous (versus grievous) image rather than the face.