The influence of eyebrows on the recognition of the emotions happiness and fear.
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2017-06-05
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en
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The main purpose of this study was to investigate to what extent the recognition of emotions relies on the presence of eyebrows. An important way of expression in humans, is our facial expressing when experiencing certain emotions. Humans visualise expressions in their face by using certain facial muscles. Eyebrows are of importance in the creation of facial expressions. Without them, humans are not able to create genuine expressions (Ekman, 1992). The current study is based on the research done by Sadr et. al (2003) about identifying someone by the eyebrows and on research done by Ekman (1997) involving the recognition of emotions on someone’s face. In the current study, the influence of eyebrows on the perception of happiness and fear was investigated in a behavioural experiment among 30 students from Nijmegen aged between 18-25. Results showed that the presence or absence of eyebrows did not influence the recognition of emotions. The current study found that happiness was recognised more easily compared to fear. The results provide valuable information about the recognition of emotions of people in relation to subtle visual cues such as eyebrows. This might imply that a single facial cue might not be of importance in recognition of emotion during, for example, a social interaction.
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