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In this study several factors considered to be relevant in mediating stress arousal were experimentally manipulated. Ss selected for the coping styles anxiety denying, low anxiety, andhigh anxiety were confronted with both low- and high-arousal-inducing situations, using 2 different types of stressors (cognitive vs. emotional) in each case. Arousal reactions were measured in 3 response modalities: verbal report of subjective experience; nonverbal, nonvocal behavior; and physiological reactions. The results reveal complex interactions between type and degree of stress, coping style, and gender of Ss, confirming findings on vocal parameters of stress. These complex interactions are discussed with respect to the possibility that Ss' evaluation of situation characteristics may be influenced by coping styles and gender, resulting in differential reaction patterns.

Whereas the perception of emotion from facial expression has been extensively studied cross-culturally, little is known about judges' ability to infer emotion from vocal cues. This article reports the results from a study conducted in nine countries in Europe, the United States, and Asia on vocal emotion portrayals of anger, sadness, fear, joy, and neutral voice as produced by professional German actors. Data show an overall accuracy of 66% across all emotions and countries. Although accuracy was substantially better than chance, there were sizable differences ranging from 74% in Germany to 52% in Indonesia. However, patterns of confusion were very similar across all countries. These data suggest the existence of similar inference rules from vocal expression across cultures. Generally, accuracy decreased with increasing language dissimilarity from German in spite of the use of language-free speech samples. It is concluded that culture- and language-specific paralinguistic patterns may influence the decoding process.

The article cites a study which analyzes hand movement quality. Movement quality is the way in which human movements are executed with respect to the dimensions of time and space. It is mentioned as an important diagnostic aspect of psychopathological disorders both in the old German "expression psychology" and in the psychiatric literature. This research studied movement quality by using objective physical measurements of movement parameters and subjective movement quality judgments and by comparing both approaches in terms of reliability and validity. This is done on the basis of clinical behavior samples that compared movements of psychiatric patients before and after therapy.

While proponents of biological theories of emotion claim the existence of universal emotion and expression patterns, recent theories stress cognitive appraisal mechanisms as elicitors of emotion, thus suggesting the influence of cultural and social factors on emotional experience and emotional expression. Data front a large-scale questionnaire study with about 2400 respondents in 30 countries allowed us to test that notion in part. In this study. respondents had to describe in detail situations in which they had experienced the emotions of joy, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, shame, and guilt. The results indicate that emotional expression patterns do seem to be universal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies intended to evaluate the relative importance of person information (facial expression) and context information (situation evoking an emotion) in determining emotion attributions of observers have so far, with a few exceptions, used static stimulus presentation (photographs and/or verbal descriptions). Here an attempt is made to study emotion inference processes by using dynamic presentation of stimuli (video). Sixty judges were confronted with 60 video clips depicting an emotional situation followed by an emotional facial expression of an actor/actress in reaction to this situation. These clips were selected from films and TV shows. Three groups of 20 judges each watched (i) only the first takes of the clips depicting an emotion-arousing situation, or (ii) only the second takes of the clips presenting the emotional facial expressions, or (iii) combinations of both takes depicting the emotion-arousing situation followed by the facial expression. Their task was to judge the emotion(s) expressed by the person in the given situation. Results indicate that context information dominated person information in determining emotion attributions. Furthermore, differences were found with respect to the relative discrepancy or consonance of clips (situation information was more important to judges in discrepant compared with consonant clips) and differences due to gender of the actors (when watching actresses, person information dominated judgements; when watching actors, situation information was dominant). Results are discussed with respect to possible differences between static and dynamic stimulus presentation and with respect to the general process of inferring emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]