Faces and bodies in emotion recognition: complementary and conflicting cues

The face has traditionally been considered the primary source of information for emotion recognition. However, in everyday social interaction, facial expressions are embedded within bodies, actions, scenes, and interactions. This review examines how facial and bodily expressions shape emotion recognition, focusing on when the two sources provide complementary or conflicting information. In most cases, face and body play complementary roles and can be integrated to facilitate emotion recognition, particularly when they convey congruent emotions or are presented dynamically. However, face-body integration may interfere when the two convey conflicting emotions. Here, recognition may be slowed, biassed, or shaped by the cue that provides more reliable evidence. When facial expressions are highly intense or ambiguous, the body may exert a stronger influence, whereas clear diagnostic facial cues, such as tears for sadness, may increase the influence of the face. We argue that face-body emotion perception is best understood through a flexible reliability-weighting account, in which observers weigh cues according to their clarity, diagnosticity, perceptual coherence, and relevance to the task. This weighting may vary across development, ageing, clinical conditions, individual differences, and cultural background, although current evidence often does not yet distinguish single-cue perception from altered cue integration.