TALK: Talk by Megan Willis - "Beyond explicit recognition: The influence of facial expressions on behaviour"

Over the past four decades an abundance of research has been dedicated towards delineating the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underpin explicit facial expression recognition. We have a considerably poorer understanding of the manner in which we use the information depicted in facial expressions to guide our subsequent behaviour. Developing our understanding of the processes that underlie the way in which facial expressions influence behaviour is particularly important, given that individuals in many clinical conditions show the co-existence of abnormal social behaviour and facial expression recognition impairments. This talk will discuss recent research that has explored how we use facial expressions to guide decisions relevant to our social behaviour, in this case, judging how approachable another person is – and the impact that context and social anxiety have on these judgements. Finally, this talk will also discuss new research examining how facial expressions influence an individual’s confidence and task performance, which has important implications for understanding behaviour in employment and educational settings.

Person Perception Seminars - ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition & its Disorders