Facial blushing influences perceived embarrassment and related social functional evaluations

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

doi:10.1080/02699931.2019.1634004

Facial blushing influences perceived embarrassment and related social functional evaluations

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

Authors

C. Thorstenson

A. Pazda

Dr Stephanie Lichtenfeld stephanie.lichtenfeld@durham.ac.uk
Honorary Fellow

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

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Copyright Statement
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Cognition and Emotion on 27th June 2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/02699931.2019.1634004