The Role of Facial Expression in Intra-individual and Inter-individual Emotion Regulation

This article describes the role and functions of facial expressions in human-human and human-computer interactions from a psychological point of view. We introduce our theoretical framework, which is based on componential appraisal theory and describe the methodological and theoretical challenges to studying the role of facial expression in intra-individual and interindividual emotion regulation. This is illustrated by some results of empirical studies. Finally we discuss the potential significance of componential appraisal theory for diagnosing and treating affect disturbances and sketch possible implications for emotion synthesis and affective user modeling.