Automatic integration of emotion from faces and hands

Facial expression and bodily posture body provide rich about other peoples’ emotional states. Visual information about body posture rapidly and automatically influences perception of facial emotion. Even images of isolated hands carry rich information about emotion, but it is unknown whether this local information is automatically integrated with perception of facial emotion. We created composite stimuli in which facial emotional expressions (anger or fear) were superimposed onto bodies expressing either the same or a different emotion. We manipulated whether the full body context was shown, or only the hands. Participants judged the emotion of the face, ignoring the bodily context. Consistent with previous findings, whole body context exerted clear influence on the accuracy and speed judgments of facial emotion judgments. Critically, similar effects were found for faces presented in the context of isolated hands. This demonstrates that emotion from hands is automatically integrated with facial emotion.