Is a picture worth a thousand words? New article looking at emotion recognition through Armand Henrion self-portraits!

Figure 1 display in the article. Here are the emotions selected over two presentations for 11 of Armand Henrion’s self-portraits. The y-axis represents the percentage of participants choosing each emotion, calculated from the total number of participants in that sample. The x-axis represents 20 emotion terms plus an other emotion category.

In one of our most recent article, published at BRILL (Art & Perception), members of the colour team led by Dr Domicele Jonauskaite and Prof. Christine Mohr, looked at emotion recognition when mixed emotions are displayed. To do so, they studied emotion recognition using 11 self-portraits painted by Armand Henrion (1875–1958), in which he depicts himself as a Pierrot clown displaying different affective states.

Results confirmed that Armand Henrion’s self-portraits do display mixed emotions! Participants selected diverses emotions for the 11 portraits (see figure on the left). They were different in valence but also in intensity. The authors conclude that Armand Henrion’s self-portraits provide a promising set of facial stimuli to investigate mixed emotions. Each self-portrait displays diverse emotions of varying intensities and they are realistic because they could all be linked to possible situations.

If you are interested in knowing more about those fascinating portraits and what emotions they elicit, you can access the full article here. You can also contact us here for more information on this and our other studies!