Criteria for emotion recognition from verbal and nonverbal expression: Studying baggage loss in the airport

The issue of emotion recognition in real-life settings, lacking a clear cri terion of the nature of the underlying emotion, is raised. After reporting their luggage lost, 110 airline passengers were asked to rate their emotion al state (subjective feeling criterion). The agents who had processed the c laims were asked to rate the passengers' emotional state (objective behavio r criterion) as well as their own feelings. An excerpt of the videotaped in teraction for 40 passengers was rated for emotional state by judges on the basis of(a) verbal and nonverbal cues or (b) nonverbal cues only. As predic ted, the data show that judges' inferences in both exposure conditions corr elate more strongly with the objective behavior (agent ratings) than the su bjective feeling criterion (self-ratings). Using the Facial Action Coding S ystem (FACS), objectively coded "felt" (but not false) smiles correlated po sitively with a good humor scale in both criteria and judges' ratings.