The bidirectional influence of emotion expressions and context: emotion expressions, situational information and real-world knowledge combine to inform observers’ judgments of both the emotion expressions and the situation

This article was supported by the Open Access Publication Fund of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.We proposed and tested the notion of a bidirectional influence of emotion expressions and context. In two studies (N = 215, N = 222), we found that the expressions shown by supporters and opponents of a player in a ball game were used by observers to correctly deduce the eliciting situation – i.e. the outcome of the game. Conversely, knowledge of the outcome of the game (as well as real world knowledge of the negative interdependence of opponents in a competitive game) influenced the perception of both the emotions shown (Study 1) and the perceived bias/emotional control exhibited by the expressers (Study 2). This research contributes to a growing body of research that shows that both situations and emotion expressions contain intrinsic meaningful information and that both sources of information are used by observers in a social appraisal process.Peer Reviewe