Human communication of emotions is achieved through both facial and vocal information. The purpose of this study is to investigate the dominant sensory modality in recognition of emotions to the multi-modal expression. In Experiment 1, expressions of happiness, surprise, sadness, or aversion was presented vocally, facially, or in both modalities through the expression of an interjectory word “eh”. Participants were required to judge the emotion that was expressed. In Experiment 2, recognition of conflicted emotions between modalities was investigated by combining different emotions between facial and vocal expression. Results of the two experiments indicated that the observers predominantly recognized happiness and surprise that was expressed facially rather than vocally. Furthermore, the expression of happiness was often mistaken as surprise, and the expression of sadness was often mistaken as aversion. Importantly, however, the reverse of these mistakes was little observed. Such the asymmetries of confusion were consistently obtained in every modality including bimodal presentations. This evidence is suggestive that an amodal processing system exists in multi-modal recognition of emotions.

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The purpose of our study was to determine the criteria for discriminating between ten emotions (surprise, excitement, joy, contentment, relaxedness, drowsiness, sadness, cold-anger, hot-anger, and fear). Using these subscales we calculated the hit-rate of discriminating between the emotions based on a listening task with a forced-choice evaluation. In the first experiment, participants (n=39) evaluated a Voice Quality Scale for Emotion Evaluation (VQSEE) (Ikemoto & Suzuki, 2008) after listening to vowels expressing the ten emotions. As a result, we determined three significant canonical discriminant functions (warmth, strength, and dullness) with an average hit-rate for the ten emotions of 23% for the canonical discriminant analysis. The average for the forced-choice listening task was 32%. In the second experiment, the participants (n=22) made their evaluation after listening to sentences expressing the ten emotions. The criteria were the same as for the first experiment. The average hit-rates of the canonical discriminant analysis and the forced-choice evaluation were 35% and 46% respectively.

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We investigated how the costs and benefits of telling a lie affect a person who is lying in an attempt to avoid punishment. One hundred and sixty-eight college students were asked to read three scenarios in which the protagonist gave an excuse for arriving late to an appointment. Excuses given for arriving late were: an incredible lie (a lie invoking an unlikely event as an excuse), a credible lie (a lie invoking a plausible event as an excuse), and the truth. Participants then rated the perceived degree of benefit (forgiveness and impression) and the behavioral and emotional costs associated with each excuse, and finally chose the “best” excuse for avoiding punishment. The incredible lie was ranked highest in terms of costs and benefits, the credible lie received moderate ranking, and the truth received the lowest ranking. Participants tended to choose the credible lie, ranked moderately in terms of costs and benefits, as the “best” excuse. The results suggest that people do not act to maximize benefit but rather to avoid high cost when making an excuse to avoid punishment.

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