Innsbruck university press Current and Future Perspectives in Facial Expression Research: Topics and Methodological Questions

In this paper we will present a review of the state of the art in the field of facial behaviour research. The focus lies on methodological aspects and reviews research done during the last ten years (1997-2007). Only studies using objective coding systems for recording facial behaviour, especially the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) (Ekman, Friesen Hager, 2002) are considered. Specifically, the following questions were studied: What are the most important fields of psychology studying facial behaviour? What types of studies (decoding, encoding and interaction studies; see Bänninger-Huber & von Salisch, 1994) are most common? What subjects were examined? What phenomena were studied? What methods were used for the analysis of facial behaviour?