The Effect of Facial Expressions Valence on the Perception of the Body Motions of Virtual Groups

Sammanfattning: To understand what modality affects the perception of emotion is interesting since it would help us get closer to understanding and dissecting emotions. Earlier research has shown that body motions can help disambiguate ambiguous (determining something vaguely presented) facial expressions but there is no study that examines the possibility of facial expressions to affect the perception of body motion. That is why this study aims to examine if facial expressions can affect the perception of full body emotions. This is done with a perceptual experiment in which 22 subjects were exposed to stimuli consisting of scenes with virtual characters expressing emotions (see figure 1). It was concluded that the facial expression does affect the perception of joined valence within the group of characters and it is thereby proven that not only body motions can help disambiguating ambiguous facial expressions but that facial expressions can help disambiguating ambiguous body motions and alter the perception of distinct body motions perceived as either positive or negative without face and hands showing. It is also concluded that perceived trustworthiness is affected by the valence of the facial expression, which supports recent studies conducted which aimed to find out what makes for a trustworthy and dominant face with the help of valence as a factor. The perceived relationship within the group is also examined as well as the dominance of the group as a whole but neither gave results clear enough to make any conclusions except that positive valence affects the perceived relationship within the group as closer. The study is conducted using virtual agents but is meant to help better understand people in everyday situations.