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To assess the impact of context information on emotion perception, participants saw a picture of a male or female person with either a neutral, happy or sad facial expression and received information about the context in which the picture was taken. Their task was to rate the emotion actually expressed in the photo (i.e., focal emotions) as well as emotions not actually expressed (i.e., non-focal emotions) and inferences extracted from them. We predicted and found that context information affected both the perception of emotions and the inferences that the observers drew from them. Perceivers used context information in order to make sense of what was perceived to the extent that in the case of neutral expressions and for non-focal emotions, they 'see' things that do not actually exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

n important determinant of observer's expectations about other's emotional reactions is the status of the other person. Status can be derived from a variety of cues and in any given situation more than one status cue may be available. The present study showed that both information about another person's organizational status and information about their level of social dominance based on verbal descriptions or facial appearance influenced the emotions that the person was expected to show. Two vignette studies were conducted to investigate the combined impact of these two sources of status information. When perceptions of dominance were manipulated through facial appearance as well as a verbal description, only dominance but not organizational status influenced anticipated emotional reactions to failure. When the only cue for dominance was facial appearance, both organizational status and appearance influenced anticipated emotions. In turn, anticipated emotional reactions predicted the expectation that the person would take responsibility for the failure or apologize, and these expectations influenced the degree to which observers recommended firing the person. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]