EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION IN UPSIDE-DOWN FACES - EVIDENCE FOR CONFIGURATIONAL AND COMPONENTIAL PROCESSING

In two experiments, a total of 126 subjects judged the seven emotional expressions of Ekman & Friesen's (1976) pictures of facial affect pre sented upright or inverted. Inversion reduced accuracy for sad, fear, anger and disgust, and sad was identified as neutral. However, happy w as identified almost perfectly on upright and inverted faces, and both anger and disgust were identified significantly often on inverted fac es. In addition, the classic confusions between surprise and feat and between disgust and anger occurred on both upright and inverted faces; It is argued that expressions are difficult ro identify on inverted f aces when they are based on configural information. However, accurate performance on inverted faces and similar confusions on upright and in verted faces are due to componential processing.