The role of face and context in emotion perception was investigated by manipulating features relevant to the stimuli and to the observer. A nested-stimulus design was used, with subjects nested under stimulus item (an encoder’s facial expression or a written emotion-eliciting scenario presented alone or in an incongruent pair) and type of task instruction (judgment of encoder’s expressed or felt emotion). Subjects, using one type of task instruction, completed a decoding task in which they viewed a facial expression, a written scenario, or a facial expression paired with an emotion-incongruent scenario. Type of task instruction was intended to alter subjects’ perception by directing attention to favor face information (judgment of expressed emotion) or context information (judgment of felt emotion). Then subjects selected the predominant emotion and indicated the intensity of various emotions they perceived the encoder to be expressing or feeling. Judgments were examined for target emotion match to face and/or context using a by-stimulus analysis. The results suggest that when an encoder’s facial expression is discordant with the emotion-eliciting event, subjects will favor facial information when judging what the encoder is expressing, whereas they will favor context information when judging what the encoder is feeling. When face or context was seen alone, type of task instruction did not influence subjects’ judgments. This research provides a more detailed understanding of the role of face and context by exploring how features associated with the observer-encoder interaction influence emotion perception.

通过操纵与刺激和观察者相关的特征来研究面部和上下文在情绪感知中的作用。使用嵌套刺激设计，受试者嵌套在刺激项目（编码器的面部表情或书面情绪引发场景单独或以不一致的对呈现）和任务指令类型（对编码器表达或感受的情绪的判断）下。受试者使用一种类型的任务指令完成了一项解码任务，在该任务中，他们查看面部表情、书面场景或与情绪不一致场景配对的面部表情。任务指导的类型旨在通过将注意力引导到面部信息（表达情绪的判断）或上下文信息（感觉情绪的判断）来改变受试者的感知。然后受试者选择主要情绪并指出他们认为编码器正在表达或感受的各种情绪的强度。使用通过刺激分析来检查目标情绪与面部和/或上下文的匹配程度的判断。结果表明，当编码器的面部表情与情绪引发事件不一致时，受试者在判断编码器表达的内容时会偏爱面部信息，而在判断编码器的感受时会偏爱上下文信息。当单独看到面部或上下文时，任务指导的类型不影响受试者的判断。这项研究通过探索与观察者-编码器交互相关的特征如何影响情绪感知，对面部和上下文的作用提供了更详细的理解。