Participants In The Teeth Holding Condition example essay topic

THE EFFECT OF PEN HOLDING CONDITIONS ON THE HUMOUR RATING OF FUNNY CARTOONS ABSTRACT Previous research concerning the facial feedback hypothesis contends that manipulation of facial expression induces emotional arousal. The aim of the experiment was to determine whether holding a pen in the mouth in way that resembles certain facial expression effect humour rating of cartoons rated by participants under one of three conditions. A sample of 60 na " ive second year students from Monash University was divided into the three treatment conditions to test the hypothesis. There were two separate hypotheses to be tested. Results were not statistically significant and alternative hypotheses were not supported however, results did indicate a trend supporting the notions of the hypotheses. Implications of this study show that there are trends to support the facial feedback hypothesis however, inconclusively.

Future research should be undertaken to effectively ascertain the validity of the facial feedback hypothesis, an extension of the James - Lange theory of emotion. The James - Lange theory suggests that there are three stages related to the experience of an emotion. The first stage is the physiological response to the stimuli mediated by the autonomic nervous system and can include increased heart beat, sweat forming on the palms and similar symptoms. Following the physiological response is the emotional or cognitive aspect of actually realising the emotion which is then followed by the behaviour al aspect which denotes what is actually done in response to the stimulus, for example running away. (Buck, 1980, p. 811) The facial feedback hypothesis is an extension of the James - Lange theory of emotion and contends that emotions are the result of physiological input rather than physiological reactions being the result of experienced emotions. According to the theory, feedback is taken from muscle activity in the body and is then interpreted by the brain and translated into the feeling of various emotions.

For example, rather than a smile being elicited from a feeling of happiness, the facial feedback hypothesis suggests that it is the smile which has caused the feeling of happiness. (Dalton, 2000, p. 60) In the past there has been research carried out to test the validity of the facial feedback hypothesis. Laird (1974, cited in Strack, Martin & Stepper. 1988, p. 769) attempted to manipulate facial expression without informing participants of the true nature of certain tasks, thus avoiding their awareness of the fact that they were actually making facial expressions. Moreover, awareness of the relevance of facial expression was eradicated through the use of a diversionary story about needing to measure facial muscular activity. The diversion was substantiated by placing surface electrodes on certain parts of the face such as between the eyebrows, at corners of the mouth and on the jaw.

When the experimenter touched these electrodes, participants would contract the relevant muscles, thus eliciting certain facial expressions inadvertently. Participants were then required to rate affective responses to slides and it was found that participants felt happier when their facial features resembles smiles and less happy when their facial features represented frowns. Moreover, Lanzetta, Cartwright-Smith & Kleck (1976, cited in Strack et al, 1988, p. 769) performed various experiments that analysed the association between the non-verbal display of emotional affect and indices of the emotional state. Subjects were influenced to hide or to exaggerate the facial expressions associated with painful shocks. Participants' facial expressions were not altered at all for this experiment, rather were requested to alter the expression that would normally have been elicited. This unnatural modification of facial expression resulted in corresponding subjective responses which ultimately supported the facial feedback hypothesis.

(Strack et al, 1988) Much later, Strack et al. (1998) in another attempt to analyse the facial feedback hypothesis, devised a study in which participants were made to imitate facial expression by holding a pen in various positions in their mouths. These positions include holding a pen with one's teeth, which would imitate the facial position of a smile or holding the pen with one's lips to limit the facial position of a smile. Some participants were asked to hold a pen in their non-dominant hand to serve as a control. Subjects were then asked to rate the humour of cartoons while holding the pens in the predetermined position. More cartoons were rated as amusing by participants in the smile facilitating position rather than by those in the smile inhibiting position.

These results seem to support that facial expression influences emotion and the facial feedback hypothesis. Furthermore, Larsen, Kasimatis and Frey (1992) aimed to inadvertently enact a facial pose of anger by placing golf tees between the eyebrows of participants and requesting that they attempt to touch the tees together. Researches deluded participants by claiming that the task was to test abilities of divided attention, thus participants were not aware of the facial expressions they were making. Participants reported feeling added discomfort when presented with aversive photographs while in the forced frowning position holding golf tees together. The aim of the current experiment was to build on the research of Strack et al.

(1988) and to further explore the extent to which the facial feedback hypothesis impacted on humour ratings for a series of cartoons, comparing the smile condition and the frown condition to the control. It was hypothesis ed that the participants in the teeth holding condition would rate the four humorous cartoons higher on a scale of 1-9 than those in the teeth and lips holding condition. Moreover it was hypothesis ed that participants in the lip balancing condition would rate humorous cartoons lower on a scale of 1-9 than those in the teeth and lips holding condition. The null hypothesis was that the position in which the pen was held to the mouth or nose would have no impact on the participants rating of the cartoons. METHOD Participants: 60 second year psychology students from both Clayton and Caulfield campuses participated in this experiment.

There were 49 females and 11 males and there was an age range from the oldest participant being 54 and the youngest participant being 18. The participants were completely na " ive to the purpose of this study. Materials: The materials used in this experiment were pens, alcohol cleansing swabs and slides showing moderately funny Gary Larson "the far side" cartoons with a mean funniness rating of 6.1 (obtained from a pilot study), a psychomotor questionnaire with a Likert rating scale of 0-9. Design: The experiment was an independent t-test design. The Independent Variable was the position of the pen being held (lip balancing, teeth or teeth and lips). The Dependent variable was the response elicited by the cartoons hence the humour ratings.

Procedure: The researcher, which in the case of this experiment was the class tutor, delivered a cover story about wanting to test the class's ability to manipulate the position of the tongue. The participants were told that the study was designed to test whether such abilities could be learned or whether such abilities were just hereditary. Participants were then randomly assigned to group numbers one, two and three by drawing a number written on a small sheet of paper from an envelope. All participants were then given alcoholic swabs to disinfect the pens and were then instructed how to hold their pens in their mouths. Group one was told to hold the pens in just their teeth, group two were told to hold the pen in both their lips and teeth and group three were instructed balance the pens between the top lip and nose. Participants where then required to rehearse their condition and record the number of times the pen fell during practise.

Participants were then asked to fill out the first half of the questionnaire with another pen while holding the initial pen in the relevant way according to their assigned group. They were also required to record the number of times the pen fell while responding to the questionnaire. Participants then viewed cartoons and were asked to rate each cartoon individually on a scale from 0-9 while still holding the pen in the required condition. After viewing four cartoons and having rated them, participants were required to complete the remainder of the questionnaire. RESULTS (See appendix A for raw data) As a comparison of humour ratings, the mean funniness for every participant was obtained as well as a calculation of the mean humour ratings for each of the conditions.

The means and standard deviations for the three groups are displayed in table 1 below. GROUP 1 GROUP 2 GROUP 3 MEAN 4.3 4.76 4.68 STANDARD DEVIATION 1.75 1.82 1.59 Two independent measures T-tests were performed on the obtained results and the following outcomes were acquired: Lip & teeth condition. [t (38) = . 162, p. 05] Lip balancing condition [t (38) = -. 820, p. 05.] Indicating that the results were not statistically significant and the null hypothesis (Ho) was accepted where the alternative hypothesis (H 1) was rejected.

The prediction that the teeth only condition (I.V.) would generate higher humour ratings for the cartoons (D.V.) than the lip & teeth condition (control), on a Likert scale of 0 to 9 and that the lip balancing condition (I.V.) would generate lower humour ratings for the cartoons (D.V.) than the lip & teeth condition (control), on a Likert scale of 0 to 9 was not supported. The results showed that the teeth only condition, which facilitated the muscles typically associated with smiling, had the lowest mean rating of 4.3 for funniness when viewing the cartoons. It was surprising that the lip balancing condition which was expected to have the lowest humour rating, as it manipulated muscles to produce a face that imitates that of a frown, was discovered to actually fall in between the 'teeth only' condition and the lip and 'teeth' condition with a mean of 4.68. DISCUSSION The aim of this experiment was to explore the validity of the Facial Feedback Hypothesis and its effect on the humour ratings of cartoons. This was achieved by comparing the 'teeth holding' (smile) and 'lips balancing' (frown) conditions to the control condition (lips and teeth). It was hypothesized that participants in the 'teeth holding' condition would produce the highest mean humour ratings and that the 'lips balancing' condition would produce the lowest mean funniness ratings.

The results did not support the hypotheses. The results of this experiment are inconsistent with both the Laird (1974) experiment which showed that the Facial Feedback hypothesis does have substance and that sensory feedback from the muscles can influence the emotional reopens to a stimulus. This inconsistency does not necessarily discredit the current research as some research critics, do not accept the validity of the Laird experiment contending that the results obtained did not conclusively justify that the facial feedback hypothesis and the James - Lange theory in general is correct (Winton, 1986, p. 811). Yet, the fact that there has been other research such as that undertaken by Lanzetta, Cartwright-Smith & Kleck (1976) which does support the Facial feedback hypothesis serves to challenge the results of the current study. The results of the current experiment did not support, with statistical significance, that emotions are influenced by sensory feedback from the facial muscles. Due to the fact that the obtained results from the t-test were above the preset alpha level of 0.05, the results that were obtained were not significant enough to conclude that the hypothesis was supported.

The experiment did however, show a relationship between both group means and as hypothesis ed, the mean humour rating for the 'teeth holding' group was higher than that of the control and mean humour rating for the 'lips balancing' group was lower than that of the control group. There were some limitations of this experiment that may have adversely impacted on the obtained results. One limitation of the experiment was that the 'lip holding' condition was difficult to achieve and took much practise for some participants to master. Consequently, some participants' concentration may have been diverted from the task of rating the cartoons and they may not have given an accurate account of their emotional responses to the stimuli. Another factor of the experiment which may have significantly impacted on the results and was not catered for in the experiment was that of the mood of participants at the time the research was conducted. If participants were in a good mood at the time of the research, they may have been more inclined to give a higher humour rating for cartoons and this may have negated the effect of the treatment condition.

Similarly if some participants were in a bad mood at the time of the experiment, they may have been inclined to react negatively to the stimulus without the treatment having had any effect at all. Moreover, facial expressions which are associated with certain emotions require the use of more facial muscles than just those in the area of the mouth. For example, when someone smiles, not only do the lips curve upward, but the muscles around the eyes also contract. The experiment only used the mouth top portray smiles and frowns and did not take into account the involvement of other facial muscles in emotional expression. As a result, it could be said that the positions created in the pen holding conditions were not in fact full smiles or frowns and thus, could not directly impact on a participant's emotional reaction to stimuli. In order to be more accurate, future research should broaden the scope of participants so as not select only university students who may be more intelligent than other potential participants and have expectations of the desired outcomes of the experiment which may impact on results.

Also, in future research, the sample size should be large to increase the likelihood of results being statistically significant. Another consideration for future research would be that participants are alone when under treatment conditions. This would ensure that emotional state and concentration are not influenced by other participants. If for example, one participant laughed when shown a cartoon, it may influence others to laugh and increase the mean humour rating for that cartoon. As a result of the experiment, it cannot be concluded that sensory feedback from the facial muscles influences emotional responses. Consequently, it is important that further research be undertaken to replicate past research and improve the ability to generalize results to the given population.

Bibliography

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Nonverbal behavior and the theory of emotion: The facial feedback hypothesis. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 38,811-824 Izard, C.E. (1990).
The Substrates and Functions of Emotion Feelings: William James and Current Emotion Theory. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 16,626-635 Larsen, R.J. (1992).
Facilitating the Furrowed Brow: An Unobtrusive Test of the Facial Feedback Hypothesis Applied to Unpleasant Affect. Journal of cognition and emotion, 6,321-338 Strack, F., Martin, L., Stepper, S. (1988).
Inhibiting and Facilitating Conditions of the Human Smile: A Non obtrusive Test of the Facial Feedback Hypothesis. Journal of personality and social psychology, 54,768-777 Dalton, T. (2000).
The developmental roots of consciousness and emotional experience. Consciousness & Emotion, 1, 55-89 Winton, W. (1986).