Conference: Theories and methods for conceptualizing facial emotion

情感是人类生活的一个重要方面。它们具有自适应功能，引导人们转向有利于生存的资源，远离潜在的危害。情绪还使人们能够快速地将重要信息传达给他人，并激励个人和集体行动。这些复杂的内部表征通常通过面部表情进行交流。无论它们是否完美地反映了情绪状态，人们通常都会根据面部表情来推断他人。对这些影响的理论解释基于这样一种观点，即情绪状态与独特的面部表情相对应。这一观点仍在发展中，并已引发了许多非常重要的理论辩论。例如，研究人员争论情绪是否真的是离散的，文化是否在如何以及何时展示和感知情绪方面存在差异，以及社会类别是否会影响情绪的展示和感知。这一系列会议探讨了面部情感和情感识别研究中的争议领域，并为开发旨在促进科学理解的新颖、竞争和可测试的假说提供了一个平台。情感科学领域的专家们参加了一个分两部分的会议，重点是解释和提炼与面部表情各方面相关的理论观点。混合会议围绕一次完全在线的会议组织，然后在第一次会议几个月后安排一次面对面会议。这些会议为辩论与面部情感和情感识别相关的核心理论问题提供了一个论坛。结果包括开发新的、可验证的假说，旨在解决悬而未决的辩论并推进当前的理论立场。这些会议得到了广泛的推广和设计，以鼓励参与，特别是对职业生涯早期的学者。会议的结果被广泛分享。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Emotions are an important aspect of human life. They serve an adaptive function, steering people toward resources that facilitate survival and away from potential harms. Emotions also enable people to quickly communicate important information to others and to motivate individual and collective action. These complex internal representations are often communicated through facial expressions. Whether or not they perfectly reflect emotional states, people routinely draw inferences about others based on facial displays. Theoretical accounts for these effects rest on the idea that emotional states correspond with unique facial expressions. This perspective is still being developed, and has spurred a number of very important theoretical debates. For example, researchers argue whether emotions are truly discrete, whether cultures vary in how and when emotion is displayed and perceived, and whether social categories influence emotion display and perception. This conference series explores areas of contention within the study of facial affect and emotion recognition and offers a platform for developing novel, competing, and testable hypotheses aimed at advancing scientific understanding. Significant training and networking opportunities are provided to scholars across multiple disciplines.Experts in the field of affective sciences meet for a two-part conference focused on explicating and refining theoretical perspectives related to various aspects of facial emotion expressions. The hybrid conferences are organized around a fully-online meeting, followed by an in-person session scheduled several months subsequent to the first meeting. The conferences provide a forum for debating central theoretical questions related to facial affect and emotion recognition. Outcomes include the development of novel, testable hypotheses meant to resolve outstanding debates and to advance current theoretical positions. The conferences are widely promoted and designed to encourage participation, especially for early-career scholars. Results of the conference are shared broadly.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.