Page 121 - Essentials of Human Communication

100 ChaPter 5 Nonverbal Messages

as much detail as possible the specific movements of the face that make up a look of
surprise. If you signal surprise like most people, you probably use raised and curved
eyebrows, horizontal forehead wrinkles, wide-open eyes, a dropped-open mouth, and
lips parted with no tension.

Facial Management As you grew up, you learned your culture’s system of nonverbal
communication. You also learned certain facial management techniques that enable you to
Explore the Exercise express feelings while achieving certain desired effects—for example, to hide certain emotions
“Facial Expressions” at and to emphasize others. Consider your own use of such facial management techniques. As you
MyCommunicationLab do so, think about the types of situations in which you would use facial management techniques
for each of the following purposes (Malandro, Barker, & Barker, 1989; Metts & Planalp, 2002):

● to intensify—for example, to exaggerate your astonishment at a surprise party to make
your friends feel better.
● to deintensify—for example, to cover up your own joy about good news in the presence of
a friend who didn’t receive any such news.
● to neutralize—for example, to cover up your sadness so as not to depress others.
● to mask—for example, to express happiness in order to cover up your disappointment at
the set of luggage you received, rather than the car you expected.
● to simulate—to express an emotion you don’t feel.
Facial management techniques help you display emotions in socially acceptable ways.
For example, if someone gets bad news in which you secretly take pleasure, the social display
rule dictates that you frown and otherwise nonverbally signal sorrow. If you place first in a
race and your best friend barely finishes, the display rule requires that you minimize your
expression of happiness—and certainly avoid any signs of gloating. If you violate these
display rules, you’ll appear insensitive. So, although facial management techniques may be
deceptive, they’re expected and even required by the rules for polite interaction.

Facial Feedback The facial feedback hypothesis claims that your facial expressions
influence physiological arousal (Cappella, 1993). In one study, for example, participants held
a pen in their teeth to simulate a sad expression and then rated a series of photographs.
Results showed that mimicking sad expressions actually increased the degree of sadness the
subjects reported feeling when viewing the photographs (Larsen, Kasimatis, & Frey, 1992).
Generally, research finds that facial expressions can produce or heighten feelings of sadness,
fear, disgust, and anger. But this effect does not occur with all emotions; smiling, for example,
doesn’t seem to make us feel happier. Further, it has not been demonstrated that facial
expressions can eliminate one feeling and replace it with another. So if you’re feeling sad,
smiling will not eliminate the sadness and replace it with gladness. A reasonable conclusion
seems to be that your facial expressions can influence some feelings, but not all (Burgoon,
Guerrero, & Floyd, 2010).

culture and Facial expression The wide variations in facial communication that we
observe in different cultures seem to reflect which reactions are publicly permissible, rather
than a difference in the way emotions are facially expressed. For example, when Japanese and
American students watched a film of a surgical operation (Ekman, 1985), they were video-
taped both while being interviewed about the film and alone while watching the film. When
alone, the students showed very similar reactions. In the interview, however, the American
students displayed facial expressions indicating displeasure, whereas the Japanese students
did not show any great emotion.
Similarly, cultural differences exist in decoding the meaning of a facial expression. In one
study, for example, American and Japanese students judged the meaning of a smiling and
a neutral facial expression. The Americans rated the smiling face as more attractive, more
intelligent, and more sociable than the neutral face. The Japanese, however, rated the smiling
face as more sociable but not as more attractive—and they rated the neutral face as more
intelligent (Matsumoto & Kudoh, 1993).