The Real Role of Facial Response in the Experience of Emotion: A Reply to Tourangeau and Ellsworth, and Others

The facial feedback hypothesis holds that emotional experiences are derived from facial expressions. Ten published studies indicating that manipulated facial expressions do produce corresponding emotional experience are contrasted with Tourangeau and Ellsworth's sole published failure to demonstrate this relation. Six other studies using a different but theoretically consistent paradigm also demonstrate facial feedback effects. Related results in many of these 16 studies effectively rule out experimental demand as an explanation and instead suggest similarities in process between facial feedback and hunger, attitude change and self-evaluation.