LAUSR

According to mainstream views of emotion perception, facial expressions are powerful signals conveying specific emotional states. This approach, which endorsed the use of stereotypical-posed faces as stimuli, has typically ignored the role of context in emotion perception. We argue that this methodological tradition is flawed. Real-life facial expressions are often highly ambiguous, heavily relying on contextual information. We review recent work suggesting that context is an inherent part of real-life emotion perception, often leading to radical categorical changes. Contextual effects are not an obscurity at the fringe of facial emotion perception, rather, they are part of emotion perception itself.