The says your own expression feeds back into how you feel, even when the expression came from nowhere emotional. The famous demonstration had people rate cartoons while holding a pen in the teeth, which forces something like a smile, or in the lips, which forces something like a pout. It had never been replicated directly. So 17 labs ran one . What came out?
The difference collapsed. The original study reported that teeth-holders rated cartoons funnier by 0.82 units on a . Across 17 independent following the same protocol, the meta-analytic difference between the smile and pout conditions came to 0.03 units, with a 95 percent confidence interval from -0.11 to 0.16. The interval includes zero, so the data are compatible with no effect.
According to the facial feedback hypothesis, affective responses can be influenced by a person’s own facial expression even when that expression did not arise from any emotional experience. It is a tidy idea with a tidy demonstration attached, which is a large part of why it traveled so well.
In the 1988 study, participants rated the funniness of cartoons while holding a pen in their mouth. Holding it with the teeth induces something like a smile; holding it with the lips induces something like a pout. Teeth-holders rated the cartoons funnier, by 0.82 units on a ten-point Likert scale.
Despite its standing, that study had never been replicated directly. This Registered Replication Report collected 17 independent direct replications of it, every one following the same vetted protocol, and meta-analyzed the difference in funniness ratings between the smile and pout conditions.
The pooled difference was 0.03 units, with a 95 percent confidence interval from -0.11 to 0.16. An interval straddling zero means no effect is compatible with the data, and an interval this tight means a large effect is not. Read the scope carefully, though. What failed here is one procedure with a pen, not the whole hypothesis that bodies and feelings influence each other.
wat. The original gap of eight tenths of a point shrank to three hundredths once seventeen labs ran the same experiment.
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This was the demonstration everybody reached for when explaining that the body shapes emotion. Losing it does not sink the broader hypothesis, and it does remove the single result the textbooks leaned on.
How do we know?
Seventeen laboratories ran direct replications of Study 1 from Strack, Martin and Stepper, all following one vetted protocol, and the funniness ratings were pooled in a meta-analysis.
What is still unknown
Direct replication reproduces one procedure, and a pen in the mouth is a crude way to make a face. Other ways of manipulating expression have not been retired by this report.
Learn something?
Where to next
Can a goat tell a smiling face from an angry one?facial expressions
Does a horse know the difference between a smile and a scowl?facial expressions
Does resisting one temptation really leave you weaker against the next?replication