Recognize and reading some informations fromfacial expressions was long time before a basic of survival. Actually, it is no more really dramatically as before and, it is nowadays more a question of decide from sucessfull or unsucessfull. As a part of Artificial Intelligenz could change this situation again and getting a repeat. With Evolution of Artificial Intelligence will be such some things getting new again in humans appreciation, what was in earlier time a part of human evolution. Dr. Leda Berio and Prof. Dr. Albert Newen from Institut für Philosophie II Ruhr-Universität Bochum are reasearching to this Theme. This Team are descriping recognition of emotions not as a marked-out part property, but as a part from an all arround process, with which make humans itselfs an impression from a person. They work from this both Developers was published on September, 24th 2024 in Magacine „Philosophy and Phenomenological Research”.

Bochum, October 11th, 2024. In the 1970s, the scientist Paul Ekman described basic emotions such as fear, anger, disgust, joy or sadness as typical facial expressions that were considered to be similar across cultures. „However, in recent years it has become increasingly clear that in many life situations, a typical facial expression does not have to be the central piece of information that guides our assessment of the feelings of others,“ says Dr Albert Newen. He cites the following example: „People almost universally judge a typical facial expression of fear as anger if they have the background knowledge that the person has just been turned away by a waiter, even though they had demonstrably reserved a table.“

Affectively speaking, the majority of people expect the person to be angry. The expectation then determines the perception of the emotion. This also applies if the facial expression is typically attributed to a different emotion. „We can sometimes recognise emotions without even seeing the face. For example, the fear of a person who is being attacked by a biting dog and who we only see from behind in a posture of freezing and fright,“ illustrates Dr Leda Berio.

The two scientists develop the theory that recognising emotions is a sub-process of the ability to form the overall impression of a person. Skin colour, age, gender, cultural characteristics such as clothing, attractiveness or gestures and posture are non-verbal and vestimentary information that is used to try to assess the other person as accurately as possible. Currently, mirroring and, to some extent, cold reading is often used in sales. Cold reading refers to the salesperson speaking in order to recognise whether the customer is reacting to stimulus words.

Everyday situations to be described or storytelling are situations that connect salespeople and customers. If I sell clothing for skiing or trail running and I practise these sports myself, then there is a high degree of potential mirroring. This is potentially one of the most sincere and successful forms of sales. The right strategy leads to success, the less correct one ensures survival.

The respective quick assessment of the other person is directly linked to social status or personality traits. The perception of feelings is strongly determined by these associations. „If we perceive a person as a woman and they show a negative emotion, we tend to categorise the emotion as fear, whereas in the case of a man it is more likely to be anger,“ Berio gives an example. Socialisation therefore plays a major role in our assessment.

In addition to the perception of characteristics and initial associations, people also have rich personal images that are created as background information for individuals – family members, friends and colleagues. Due to ethnologically strong social changes, the variety of possibilities and possible role models is also increasing. In this respect, background information helps to correctly assess role models, but the transfer to other people can provide a completely different picture.

„If a family member suffers from Parkinson’s, we learn to judge the person’s usual facial expression, which looks rather angry, as a neutral expression because we know that the rigid facial expression is part of the disease,“ says Berio.

The background information also includes personal models of typical occupational groups. „We have stereotypical assumptions of doctors, students and tradespeople about their social roles and tasks,’ says Newen. ‘We generally perceive doctors as less emotional, for example, and therefore the emotional judgement is different.“

Experiences with positive or negative situations in life also make people deal with corresponding emotions differently over the course of their lives. You can no longer necessarily burst out in affective laughter at primitive jokes, and not every loss necessarily brings with it a deep emotion of grief. In certain things, forms of professional behaviour arise to which people react calmly or more calmly or with other, less expected emotions.

People therefore make use of the great wealth of characteristics and background knowledge to assess the emotion of another person. Only in rare cases do they read the emotion from a person’s facial expression alone. „This also has consequences for recognising emotions with artificial intelligence (AI), which will only be possible reliably when AI does not rely solely on facial expressions, as most systems currently do,“ says Newen.

Funding

The work was carried out as part of the NRW-funded ‘Interact! New forms of social interaction with intelligent systems’.

Originalpublication:

Leda Berio, Albert Newen: I Expect You to Be Happy, So I See You Smile: A Multidimensional Account of Emotion Attribution, in: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2024, DOI: 10.1111/phpr.13113

ImageSource: RUB, Kramer, Das Bochumer Forschungsteam: Albert Newen und Leda Berio