Emotion, verbal context and facial expression perception: Tell me who you are and I will tell you how I perceive you

Verbal context in the perception of facial expression facilitates the activation of conceptual knowledge through which is interpreted. With the aim of analyzing how emotion, via verbal context, modulates valence, arousal and control levels in the perception of facial expression, a first experiment was preformed in which verbal context was generated using words with emotional content (positive, negative), prior to recognition of an expression mixed with happiness and sadness In a second experiment, while maintaining both verbal and facial expression context neutral, a positive or negative affective state was induced either before or after the coding of verbal context. In the first experiment, the positive verbal context condition facilitated the face mixed with happiness to be perceived as an expression of greater security/trust (control) with respect to the face mixed with sadness. In the second experiment, the positive emotion induced prior to coding the verbal context produced the face to be perceived as having an expression of greater activation with respect to when the emotion was negative. The results are discussed from constructivist model of emotion.