Expression and perception of multimodal emotional states

Background. The urge for deeper knowledge on the nature of emotion expression and perception in ecologically and socially valid conditions is of grate importance. The scope is to develop experimental procedures recording not only the demonstration of emotions, but also actual human emotional experience. Objective. The objective is to reveal the patterns of expression and identification of multimodal dynamic emotional states, based on the stimuli, created by professional actors. Sample. The experiments involved 96 (48 women and 48 men) specialists in various fields of practice as well as undergraduate and graduate students of Russian universities, average age M = 34, SD = 9.4. Methods. The Russian-language version of the Geneva Emotion Recognition test (GERT) (Barabanschikov, Suvorova, 2020). Participants were randomly presented with 83 audio-video clips of affective states played by specially trained professional actors (5 men and 5 women, average age — 37 years). It was required to attribute the perceived emotion to one of the 14 target categories. The frequency of relevant and irrelevant choices was analyzed depending on the exposure conditions. The study was approved by the Ethics Commission of the Institute of Experimental Psychology of MSPPU (decision No. 3, 22.02.2023), with which the authors of the article are affiliated. Results. The forms of expression and identification of multimodal emotional states, their determinants and conditions of realization are described. Conclusion. A new paradigm of experimental psychological research of human emotional states linking their experience, expression, and identification is outlined. The productivity of applying theatrical art practices to solve problems of academic science is demonstrated.