What is Easier: To Identify an Emotion from a Specific Facial Expression or from Emotional Prosody?

Abstract

There are intersubjective, non-linguistic means of expressing emotions. People get to know them through participation in social interactions. Therefore they learn how to show their emotions in a way that is understandable to others and recognize other people’s emotions. Two interrelated inquiries were carried out. The first one was an online survey, which was attended by adults. Their task was to recognize the emotion expressed by a person depicted in realistic photography. The second inquiry was an auditory test, which was attended by university students of the speech and language therapy and audiology. The recordings used in the auditory test were performed with the participation of adults that are not educated actors. Students were asked to recognize the emotions of a person speaking, on the basis of short utterances. Each expression has no broader context and its semantics was emotionally neutral. Recognized emotions are divided into the following groups: “rejoicing”, “sadness”, “anger”, and “emotional neutrality”. The results of both tests yielded answers to, among others, the following questions. Are adults able to effectively recognize someone else’s emotions when they have only visual or auditory modalities at their disposal? Do difficulties in recognizing emotions depend on sensory modality? Which emotions have similar expression?