Facial feedback hypothesis

The hypothesis that changes in facial muscle activity can influence emotional experience, rather than merely express emotions.

Facial musculature: The muscles that move the face and produce expressions such as smiling and frowning. These muscles provide the bodily signals proposed to feed back into emotional experience.
Strack, Martin, and Stepper experiment: A 1988 experiment that compared humor ratings while participants held a pen with their teeth or lips. The study became a landmark test of whether facilitating a smile changes emotional judgments.
Charles Darwin: The English naturalist whose work on evolution shaped modern biology. Darwin argued that habitual expressive movements can intensify emotional states.
Facial feedback controversy: The dispute over the size, reliability, and interpretation of effects of facial movement on emotion. This debate centers on whether facial feedback produces dependable changes in feeling.
Proprioception: The perception of the position and movement of one’s body. Signals about facial muscle movement may contribute to the feedback proposed by the hypothesis.
Replication crisis: A period of scrutiny over the reproducibility of published findings across scientific fields. Attempts to reproduce the pen-in-mouth result raised doubts about the original evidence.
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals: Charles Darwin’s 1872 book examining the expression of emotions in humans and other animals. Darwin’s account connected expressive movements with the intensity of emotion.
Embodied cognition: The view that cognitive processes are shaped by bodily states and interactions with the environment. The hypothesis is a focused claim within broader theories of bodily influence on mind.
Interoception: The perception of internal bodily states, including signals from organs and physiological systems. Emotional effects may arise partly from perceiving bodily changes associated with facial expression.
Multilab replication of the facial feedback hypothesis: A preregistered, multisite replication that tested whether facial actions affect emotional responses. Its results offered a large-scale check on the hypothesis after replication concerns.

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