Facial Expressions of Emotion and Personality

Publisher Summary Emotion is central to the structure and processes of personality and the conflicts and crises that accompany personality development. Establishing the links between emotion and personality offers great promise for the studies of personality and emotion—such research points to the social and biological mechanisms underlying the structure and continuity of personality, and presents a framework for thinking about the elaboration, stability, and social consequences of specific emotion tendencies. This chapter reviews the evidence relating facial expressions of emotion to personality. The chapter begins with a presentation of the discrete emotions perspective, which specifies how specific emotion tendencies observed early in life elaborate into personality traits. The chapter then outlines how facial expressions of emotion mediate the interaction between personality and the social environment. It also presents a review of the empirical relations between facial expressions of emotion and personality. Finally, the chapter discusses the role personality-related facial expressions may play in the social lives of people across the life course.