Browsing by Author "Fridlund, Alan J."

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    Facial displays are tools for social influence
    (Elsevier, 2018-03-12) Crivelli, Carlos; Fridlund, Alan J.
    Based on modern theories of signal evolution and animal communication, the behavioral ecology view of facial displays (BECV) reconceives our ‘facial expressions of emotion’ as social tools that serve as lead signs to contingent action in social negotiation. BECV offers an externalist, functionalist view of facial displays that is not bound to Western conceptions about either expressions or emotions. It easily accommodates recent findings of diversity in facial displays, their public context-dependency, and the curious but common occurrence of solitary facial behavior. Finally, BECV restores continuity of human facial behavior research with modern functional accounts of non-human communication, and provides a non-mentalistic account of facial displays well-suited to new developments in artificial intelligence and social robotics.
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    Facial expressions
    (Springer, 2018-10-09) Fridlund, Alan J.; Crivelli, Carlos; Jarillo, Sergio; Fernández-Dols, José-Miguel; Russell, James A.
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    Four Misconceptions About Nonverbal Communication
    (SAGE Publications, 2023-02-15) Patterson, Miles L.; Fridlund, Alan J.; Crivelli, Carlos
    Research and theory in nonverbal communication have made great advances toward understanding the patterns and functions of nonverbal behavior in social settings. Progress has been hindered, we argue, by presumptions about nonverbal behavior that follow from both received wisdom and faulty evidence. In this article, we document four persistent misconceptions about nonverbal communication—namely, that people communicate using decodable body language; that they have a stable personal space by which they regulate contact with others; that they express emotion using universal, evolved, iconic, categorical facial expressions; and that they can deceive and detect deception, using dependable telltale clues. We show how these misconceptions permeate research as well as the practices of popular behavior experts, with consequences that extend from intimate relationships to the boardroom and courtroom and even to the arena of international security. Notwithstanding these misconceptions, existing frameworks of nonverbal communication are being challenged by more comprehensive systems approaches and by virtual technologies that ambiguate the roles and identities of interactants and the contexts of interaction.
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    Inside-Out: From Basic Emotions Theory to the Behavioral Ecology View
    (Springer US, 2019-01-25) Crivelli, Carlos; Fridlund, Alan J.
    Basic Emotions Theory (BET) is the most popular and deeply rooted psychological theory of both emotion and the facial behavior held to express it. We review its Western foundations and the key developments in its evolution, focusing on its parsing of facial expressions into two kinds: biological, categorical, iconic, universal “facial expressions of emotion,” versus modified, culturally diverse versions of those iconic expressions due to intermediation by learned “display rules.” We suggest that this dichotomy and its many corollaries are oversimplified, and that many of BET’s recent modifications are inconsistent in ways that may render it impossible to test and immune to falsification. In contrast, we suggest that the behavioral ecology view of facial displays, as an externalist and functionalist approach, resolves the quandaries and contradictions embedded in BET’s precepts and extensions.
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    A multidisciplinary approach to research in small-scale societies: Studying emotions and facial expressions in the field
    (Frontiers in Psychology, 2016-07-18) Crivelli, Carlos; Jarillo, Sergio; Fridlund, Alan J.
    Although cognitive science was multidisciplinary from the start, an under-emphasis on anthropology has left the field with limited research in small-scale, indigenous societies. Neglecting the anthropological perspective is risky, given that once-canonical cognitive science findings have often been shown to be artifacts of enculturation rather than cognitive universals. This imbalance has become more problematic as the increased use of Western theory-driven approaches, many of which assume human uniformity (“universality”), confronts the absence of a robust descriptive base that might provide clarifying or even contrary evidence. We highlight the need for remedies to such shortcomings by suggesting a two-fold methodological shift. First, studies conducted in indigenous societies can benefit by relying on multidisciplinary research groups to diminish ethnocentrism and enhance the quality of the data. Second, studies devised for Western societies can readily be adapted to the changing settings encountered in the field. Here, we provide examples, drawn from the areas of emotion and facial expressions, to illustrate potential solutions to recurrent problems in enhancing the quality of data collection, hypothesis testing, and the interpretation of results.
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    A rejoinder to Kret and Straffon
    (Elsevier, 2018-06-05) Jarillo, Sergio; Fridlund, Alan J.; Crivelli, Carlos; Fernández-Dols, José-Miguel; Russell, James A.