Facial blushing influences perceived embarrassment and related social functional evaluations

Thorstenson, C.; Pazda, A.; Lichtenfeld, S.

Abstract

Facial blushing involves a reddening of the face elicited in situations involving unwanted social attention. Such situations include being caught committing a social transgression, which is typically considered embarrassing. While recent research has demonstrated that facial redness can influence social evaluations, including emotional states such as perceived anger, the influence of blushing on social perceptions related to embarrassment or social transgression has yet to be investigated. Across three experiments, we manipulated the redness of neutral faces (Exp. 1) and faces displaying different emotional expressions (Exps. 2 and 3), and had participants evaluate perceived embarrassment, apology sincerity, and likeliness to forgive a transgression for each set of stimuli. Results indicated that redder (relative to baseline) faces influenced perceived embarrassment, apology sincerity, and likeliness to forgive a transgression. We discuss the implications in the context of a social functional account of facial color in emotion expression and perception.

Citation

Thorstenson, C., Pazda, A., & Lichtenfeld, S. (2020). Facial blushing influences perceived embarrassment and related social functional evaluations. Cognition and Emotion, 34(3), 413-426. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2019.1634004

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 12, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Jun 23, 2019
• Publication Date: 2020
• Deposit Date: Jul 4, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 23, 2020
• Journal: Cognition and Emotion
• Print ISSN: 0269-9931
• Electronic ISSN: 1464-0600
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 34
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 413-426
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2019.1634004
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1292916