Mimicking Facial Expressions Facilitates Working Memory for Stimuli in Emotion-Congruent Colours

Abstract

It is one thing for everyday phrases like “seeing red” to link some emotions with certain colours (e.g., anger with red), but can such links measurably bias information processing? We investigated whether emotional face information (angry/happy/neutral) held in visual working memory (VWM) enhances memory for shapes presented in a conceptually consistent colour (red or green) (Experiment 1). Although emotional information held in VWM appeared not to bias memory for coloured shapes in Experiment 1, exploratory analyses suggested that participants who physically mimicked the face stimuli were better at remembering congruently coloured shapes. Experiment 2 confirmed this finding by asking participants to hold the faces in mind while either mimicking or labelling the emotional expressions of face stimuli. Once again, those who mimicked the expressions were better at remembering shapes with emotion-congruent colours, whereas those who simply labelled them were not. Thus, emotion–colour associations appear powerful enough to guide attention, but—consistent with proposed impacts of “embodied emotion” on cognition—such effects emerged when emotion processing was facilitated through facial mimicry.

Keywords

• emotion
• colour
• emotional faces
• colour–emotion associations
• visual working memory