Facial Expressions of Violence and Aggression
Emotions
Emotions are involuntary, immediate and transient information-processing systems. They work below the surface of consciousness, triggering brain and bodily functions that drive behaviour, motivation, decisions and actions.
Emotions create facial expressions, which provide moment-by-moment glimpses into the emotional state of others. Like emotions, expressions are immediate and transient, lasting only seconds. Emotions can continue if the trigger continues to trigger. Moods last longer–seconds, minutes, hours, days and sometimes years, for example, depression.
Typically, emotions last between a fraction of a second and six seconds. This can depend on the emotion; for example, surprise is typically the shortest in duration, lasting only until the source of the surprise is realised. Surprise then switches to another emotion, depending on the surprise's source. If something suddenly floats down in front of your face, surprise would occur instantly (unless it was expected). Then, if it was a giant hairy spider, your emotion may turn to fear. If, on the other hand, it was a $100 note, your emotion may turn to happiness.
Observing emotional expression in others influences your emotions and actions. Facial expressions provide opportunities to predict behaviour.
In this article, we'll examine the emotions contributing to aggression and violence and how recognising their corresponding expressions can predict violent events and imminent danger. We’ll look at the research on emotion recognition in violent offenders and how brain differences may contribute to emotion recognition deficits, perpetuating violence.
Dangerous Emotions
Triggered by violations of ethics and morality, anger, disgust and contempt contribute to feelings of hatred.
Anger
Triggered by injustice and goal obstruction, anger shares the same neural pathways as offensive aggression and can motivate a violent response.
Fear
Fear can become dangerous when freeze and flight options are limited, switching to anger when the fight response is activated.
Disgust
Disgust relates to aversion–eliminating or repulsing something toxic. Moral disgust has a social basis, elicited by moral violations.
Contempt
Disgust and contempt are separable but overlap. Contempt relates to perceptions of status and moral superiority, devaluating and diminishing others.
Facial Expressions Predict Violent Events
Matsumoto and colleagues first established a link between the emotional expressions of leaders and ensuing political aggression in 2013. Subsequent research found that group violence followed speeches where the speaker displayed more facial expressions of anger, disgust and contempt (described as the emotion triad of hate). Further investigation of speeches by leaders of extreme political groups found elevated expressions of anger, disgust and contempt in speeches that were followed by violent events three months later. Before non-violent events, Matsumoto found only anger was elevated. It seems that the emotion triad of anger, disgust and contempt combine to create a potent mix that can lead to violence and aggression.
We don't yet know the workings surrounding this phenomenon, but one possibility is that group members who experience anger, disgust and contempt seek their leader's emotional congruity. Perhaps recognising their leader shares their emotions is perceived as approval for action. Another possibility is that leaders inadvertently prime behaviour by transmitting dangerous emotions. On investigation, Matsumoto's preliminary studies show that the priming of anger, disgust and contempt creates hostile thoughts, language and behaviours.
When leaders express their emotions of anger, disgust and contempt, and group violence follows, could they be deemed guilty of incitement? Under Australian law, an individual who urges the commission of an offence is guilty of incitement. However, it must be intended. Establishing whether emotions are expressed purposefully, with intent to incite violence, would be difficult.
Facial Expressions Predict Imminent Aggression and Violence
Moving away from group violence, individuals experience aggression and violence at a one-to-one level, with statistics estimating that 41 percent of Australians have experienced violence since age 15. One in four women and one in eight men experience domestic violence, which affects not only individuals but their families and society, resulting in homicide, suicide, injury, trauma and homelessness. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Violence, more than one in three recorded murders in 2022 related to domestic violence.
Anger Facial Expression Variants
In 2014, Matsumoto and Hwang studied expressions relating to loss of control and premeditated aggression. They found that variants of the anger expression were displayed before imminent assault. One variant, the loss of control face, shows at a higher intensity, with a slight lowering of the brows and strong raising of the upper eyelids and lip tightening.
Another anger variant, the premeditated assault face, is low intensity, with a slight lowering of the brows, raised upper eyelids and lip tightening. A variation of premeditated assault face included tightened lip corners and raised lower lip—significant because the facial movement occurs during controlled anger.
Disgust Facial Expression Variants
Could specific variants of the disgust expression also predict violence?
Nose wrinkling is associated with core disgust, a basic innate level of disgust which aids our survival by helping us avoid potentially toxic substances or objects that enter the mouth. The nose wrinkling drags the upper lip upwards and the brow downwards.
A variant of the disgust expression is the upper lip raise–an independent raising of the lip by musculature surrounding the mouth, as opposed to the lip being dragged upwards by nose wrinkling. This variant is associated with moral disgust and, therefore, is more likely to occur before violence.
Evidence that specific expressions predict aggression significantly impacts crime control and criminal justice. However, we don’t know whether individuals display these expressions without engaging in violence and whether individuals engage in violence without displaying these expressions.
The ability to recognise imminent aggression may be helpful for law enforcement officers, enabling protective interventions. It may also be useful for individuals who have a higher likelihood of experiencing violence.
Domestic Violence and Facial Expression
Recognising Impending Aggression
Individuals who have experienced aggression may better recognise anger. It is indeed stated that ‘truth wizards’, who are exceptionally good at detecting lies, grew up in homes where recognising emotion was a survival strategy to avoid abuse. In that context, it makes sense.
Workers who experience large amounts of aggression in their work, for example, law enforcement and hospital staff, may also have a greater ability to recognise anger. However, this has no bearing on whether they are good at detecting lies; most evidence finds that law enforcement officers are no better at detecting lies than anybody else. This is likely due to a lie bias, the tendency to believe people are lying, which is higher amongst law enforcement officers. Conversely, the general population has a truth bias.
Research surrounding the impact of abuse on emotion recognition in adults is lacking. However, several studies have found that physically abused or maltreated children have increased sensitivity to expressions of anger. Adults reporting childhood maltreatment have been found to have increased sensitivity to lower-intensity expressions of anger.
Developing sensitivity to angry expressions from aggression exposure could protect individuals via rapid threat identification, potentially enabling abuse prevention. Sounds easy.
Strategies for domestic violence intervention cannot be understated. However, despite advantages in anger recognition developed from exposure or training, victims may still be unable to prevent imminent violence. Domestic abuse of women is more prevalent than men, and women and children typically bear strength disadvantages. Potential victims may not have the time or ability to evade or pacify the potential abuser.
Victims often cannot escape abusive relationships due to the potential for escalated violence, stigma, isolation, nowhere to go, economic inequality and lack of services and police help. Victims from different cultures face additional obstacles, including language barriers, institutional discrimination, residency status and entrenched gender norms.
Entrenched Attitudes to Domestic Violence
Societal attitudes and perceptions perpetuate negative public response to domestic violence, and cognitive entrenchment and confirmation bias can fuel cultural issues within law enforcement communities. Perpetrators' denials are believed, and victims are perceived as the problem.
The Queensland government's inquiry into law enforcement responses to domestic violence found a failure of leadership, with evidence of significant sexism, misogyny and racism, providing shocking examples of attitudes towards domestic violence victims. These included:
“rape is just surprise sex” and “she’s just a filthy grub trying to get back at him… waste of our time”.
The report also highlighted the impact on victim-survivors:
“…I’m 4’11 and 48 kilos my partner is 6’3 and 95 kilos. There is no way I could hurt him and he threw me around. They took me away and put me in custody.”
“They could have taken me seriously, maybe then I would not have been electrocuted and raped by my ex and dumped by the side of the road…”
Dysfunctional law enforcement cultures, such as the one described, may not benefit from facial expression training where systemic issues exist. However, judicious cultures might.
Further research on facial expressions might determine whether specific emotions occur in victims or perpetrators after an event, for example, fear, anger, sadness and shame. Observing such expressions could guide police response decisions. But should we wait until an act of violence is imminent or has occurred? Emotion recognition training could prove helpful as an early intervention tool.
Altered Perceptions of Emotion/Expression Recognition
Neural Processing Differences
Neural processing of angry expressions is connected to social adjustment and regulation of aggressive impulses. Studies of violent offenders consistently demonstrate abnormalities in frontal lobe structure, potentially affecting expression recognition. Evidence of differences in emotion recognition has also been found in abused or maltreated children due to developmental differences.
Facial Recognition Deficits in Offenders
Several studies have found facial recognition deficits in offenders.
Sedgwick and colleagues(2017) found facial recognition deficits in violent individuals with antisocial personality disorder and schizophrenia.
Hoaken and colleagues (2007) found lower accuracy in facial recognition in violent offenders.
Nyline and colleagues (2018) found offenders less accurate in identifying fear and sadness and decoding emotions on female faces.
These findings suggest that flaws in neural processing are potentially connected to brain structure. With the current understanding of neural plasticity, emotional intelligence and emotion recognition training may prove helpful for intervention or rehabilitation. However, emotion recognition training may only be helpful in specific types of abusers, as differences in emotion decoding ability have been found in abuser subtypes.
Interested in intimate partner violence (male abusers), Babcock and colleagues (2008) found:
Emotion/expression decoding deficits appeared in generally violent or antisocial abusers.
Borderline or dysphoric abusers were particularly accurate in decoding expression.
Family-only abusers made no more errors than nonviolent men.
Anger Bias
Social information processing theory suggests aggressive individuals may hold an anger bias (an assumption of anger) when interpreting behaviour. Research supports the theory:
Several researchers found that individuals with higher levels of aggression were more likely to misattribute expressions as angry.
Kirsh and colleagues (2006) found that participants consuming high levels of violent media responded faster to depictions of anger and slower to happiness.
Mellentin and colleagues (2015) found that anger-prone and aggressive individuals are biased towards perceiving anger and hostility. This increases the likelihood of reactive aggressive behaviour to discourage potential aggression.
Sensitivity to Anger Expression
Alternatively, offenders may be more sensitive to expressions of anger, accurately perceiving subtle anger instead of misperceiving it. Wilkowski and Robinson (2012) separated anger recognition accuracy from anger bias by focusing on the intensity of angry expressions. They found that aggressive individuals are perceptually sensitive to anger, concluding that what may appear to be a bias is a refined skill.
Evidence that abused or maltreated children display anger sensitivity could explain why violent offenders are biased towards angry faces. As mentioned earlier, individuals who have experienced aggression may better recognise anger. If the aggression is present early in a child’s life, they may develop sensitivity to angry expressions.
Intergenerational Transmission of Violence
Studies of abused children and violent adult offenders support intergenerational transmission of violence theory. Whereby violent adults exposed to childhood violence negatively influence another child's development via abuse. Abuse is commonly known as a risk factor for further domestic violence and mental illness.
Early intervention during childhood, focusing on emotional development and emotion recognition, offers an opportunity to break cycles of intergenerational violence.
Seinfeld and colleagues (2018) found that immersive virtual reality could be helpful. They found male domestic violence offenders were less able to recognise fear in female faces, instead classifying them as happy. The researchers used a virtual female to substitute the male offender's body in a virtual reality environment. A virtual male approached, exhibiting abusive behaviour and progressively encroaching on the offender's personal space. Following the virtual reality experience, offenders' recognition and classification of female fear faces improved.
While this process is unsuitable for children, immersive virtual reality and gaming technologies may provide a helpful intervention in engaging children in emotional development activities.
Wrapping Up
Facial expressions provide us with a glimpse into the transient emotional state of another. These glimpses offer the opportunity to predict behaviour, in turn influencing our own emotions and behavioural responses. Research findings surrounding the facial expressions of violence and aggression and emotional processing differences are interesting and provide the potential to control acts of violence and break cycles of intergenerational violence.
For further reading of the science mentioned in this article, click here to download a bibliography.
