Emotion

2011, Vol. 11, No. 4, 975980

2011 American Psychological Association

1528-3542/11/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0023468

BRIEF REPORT

Compatibility Between Tones, Head Movements, and Facial Expressions

Gernot Horstmann

Ulrich Ansorge

Bielefeld University

University of Vienna

The study tests the hypothesis of an embodied associative triangle among relative tone pitch (i.e., high or low
tones), vertical movement, and facial emotion. In particular, it is tested whether relative pitch automatically
activates facial expressions of happiness and anger as well as vertical head movements. Results show robust
congruency effects: happiness expressions and upward head tilts are imitated faster when paired with high
rather than low tones, while anger expressions and downward head tilts are imitated faster when paired with
low rather than high tones. The results add to the growing evidence favoring an embodiment account that
emphasizes multimodal representations as the basis of cognition, emotion, and action.
Keywords: emotion, expression, embodiment

embodiment approach (e.g., Barsalou, 2008; Balcetis & Cole, 2009;

Glenberg & Kaschak, 2003; Niedenthal, Barsalou, Winkielman,
Krauth-Gruber, & Ric, 2005) opposes the traditional cognitive science
view which emphasizes symbolic information processing and propositional representations within a highly modular architecture of the
mind (e.g., Carruthers, 2005; Fodor, 1983; Pylyshyn, 1984). In contrast to this, the embodiment approach emphasizes analogical
modality-based information processing and a highly interconnected
architecture of the mind. The modal representations of a smile, for
example, comprise sensations, perceptions, bodily feelings, and actions that usually co-occur during episodes of smiling. The modal
components, in turn, are connected via supramodal convergence
zones (Damasio, 1989) which allow their reciprocal activation. Because of intermodal connections, cues from one modality can automatically activate components of a representation in other modalities.

Understanding social-communicative behavior is a key concern in

psychology. In communication, nonverbal signals such as facial expressions and gestures are of particular interest. In common belief,
nonverbal signals can be more veridical of what social partners
believe, feel, or intend than verbal communication (e.g., Ekman,
1972; but see Fridlund, 1994). However, apart from reflecting inner
states such as beliefs or feelings, nonverbal signals also depend on
situational cues, including the presence of a relevant social audience
(Chovil, 1991; Kraut & Johnston, 1979), the observation of another
person experiencing pain (Bavelas, Black, Lemery, & Mullett, 1986),
the exposure to an expressive face (Dimberg, 1982), or the presence
of low or high tones (Horstmann, 2010). In many cases, nonverbal
signals and situational cues appear to form sensory-motor couplings
which are automatic in the classical sense (cf., Posner & Snyder,
1975), that is, in being triggered without intention, proceeding without
awareness, and without tight volitional control.
In most accounts, situational cuing either directly fulfills communicative functions or appears as a side effect of otherwise
adaptive principles. For example, wincing while observing another
persons pain signals a basic form of empathy, communicating I
feel as you feel (Bavelas et al., 1986); and the automatic mimicry
of facial expressions has been interpreted as a side effect of the
sensory-motor loops involved in the perception of facial expressions (Niedenthal, Brauer, Halberstadt, & Innes-Ker, 2001).
Sensory-motor couplings in nonverbal behavior have become a key
finding for an embodied cognition and emotion theoretical view. This

An Intermodal Associative Triangle of Relative Tone

Pitch, Facial Expression, and Vertical Direction
The present work deals with sensory-motor couplings that form an
intermodal associative triangle between relative tone pitch, facial
expression, and vertical direction. As to the pitch-expression association, converging evidence from different disciplines within and outside psychology shows that the distinction between relatively high
versus low tones is connected to signals of friendliness and happiness,
versus to signals of threat and anger. For example, a smile can be
heard in concomitant vocalizations because of a relatively high fundamental frequency (F0; Drahota, Costall, & Reddy, 2007). F0 is the
slowest sine-wave oscillation of a sound, corresponding roughly to the
phenomenally perceived pitch. Research on vocal expression of emotion has found high F0 tied to happiness (e.g., Juslin & Laukka, 2003;
Sauter, Eisner, Calder, & Scott, 2010), and developmental research
found that infants show positive facial expressions when praised in a
high voice and negative expressions when scolded in a low voice
(Fernald, 1993). Additionally, Morton (1977, 1994) analyzed vocal
behavior from 54 species and found that low pitched sounds signal
aggression, whereas high pitched sounds signal helplessness, friendliness, and submission. Second, tone pitch has strong spatial associ-

This article was published Online First May 23, 2011.

Gernot Horstmann, Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University,
Bielefeld, Germany; Ulrich Ansorge, Department of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
We are indebted to Rebecca Frster and to Nicole Rehrmann for collecting the data and for assessing the latencies for the facial responses, and
to Katja Tiemann for providing the photos.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Gernot Horstmann, Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, P.O. Box 100 131,
D-33501 Bielefeld, Germany. E-mail: gernot.horstmann@uni-bielefeld.de
975

Aim of the Present Study

The present study seeks further insight into the embodied associative triangle between facial expression, relative tone pitch, and vertical
direction. The sensory-motor associations between tone pitch and
facial expressions are reflected in the tone-affect compatibility effect
(Horstmann, in press): When participants imitated facial expressions
of emotion that were presented simultaneously with short (100 ms)
tones, happy facial expressions were imitated faster when the tone
was high relative to low, whereas angry facial expressions were
imitated faster when the tone was low relative to high. The present
study seeks to (a) replicate this effect with a modified procedure that
allows more reliable conclusions about the automaticity of the process, and to (b) probe the second part of the multimodal triangle: the
association between pitch and vertical body movements.
As to the first aim, Horstmann (in press) used a dual-task
paradigm where the tones had to be categorized after the facial
response. Thus, tone discrimination was part of the task, undermining the inference that the congruency effect was independent
from intention and in this sense automatic. In the present Experiment 1, the tone was completely task-irrelevant and participants
were instructed to ignore it. In addition, Experiment 2 used a task
where attention is diverted from tone pitch, to further test the limits
of automaticity of the effect.
As to the second aim, the test of an embodied association between
pitch and vertical movement, Experiment 1 tests two conditions (see
Figure 1). In the face condition, the task closely resembled the one in
Horstmann (in press, Experiment 1): Participants had to imitate a
happy or an angry face, which was accompanied by a high or low
tone. The head condition was structurally the same as the face condition, with the only critical change being that the to-be-imitated
movement was an upward versus a downward head tilt. The head
condition specifically tests the hypothesis that pitch primes vertical
head movementswe expected faster (or more accurate) downward
head tilts to low than to high tones and faster (or more accurate)
upward head tilts to high than to low tones.

Facial expression
420
410
400
390
380
370
360
350
340
330
320
friendly
angry
Expression

RT

ations with vertical space. For example, Ben-Artzi and Marks (1995)
revealed faster categorization of vertical position accompanied by
irrelevant tones in compatible trials (high positions and high tones,
low positions and low tones) than in incompatible trials (see also,
Walker & Smith, 1984). Finally, as to the association between vertical
direction and emotional expressions, we first note that social gestures
are inherently spatial, as any physical action is. Accordingly, theorists
of signaling have interpreted nonverbal signals as intention movements (Heinroth, 1911; Fridlund, 1991, 1994) revealing the initial
phase of a forthcoming action (e.g., teeth baring being an intentional
movement signaling an attack which might include biting). With
particular relevance to vertical direction and emotion, facial expressions of happiness and anger entail upward movements of the lip
corners in smiling (and sometimes also of the eyebrows as in the
eye-brow flash; cf. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1972), while the expression of
anger typically entails a downward movement of the lip corners and
the inner brows. Additionally, according to a study by Rosenberg and
Langer (1965), extreme anger may be expressed by a combined
forward/downward movement of the whole body.

RT

HORSTMANN AND ANSORGE

976

Head response
380
370
360
350
340
330
320
310
300
290
280
Up
Down
Expression

Figure 1. Results for Experiment 1. Error bars show the standard error of
the mean.

Experiment 1
Method
Participants. Participants were 24 students, 12 women (age:
M 26.8, SD 4.8). Some were psychology students who
received course credits; others, recruited in the Bielefeld University public hall, received candy as a symbolic gratification.
Stimuli. Tones were monophonic, 100-ms square waves of
300 or 600 Hz (cf. Horstmann, in press), corresponding to a
relatively low or high tone, respectively. They were presented via
the internal speaker of the computer. Sound level was about 50
dB(A), as measured at the speaker, and far less (below the measuring range of a Noris NM-3 sound level meter) at the participants ear in about 150 cm distance. The color photographs were
custom-made for this experiment (see Figure 2). They depict a
woman showing closed-mouth expressions of happiness or anger,
as well as a left or a right head turn, and an upward or downward
head tilt. The expressions corresponded to Ekman and Friesens
(1978) criteria for closed mouth expressions of happiness and
anger, respectively. For the head movements, expression was
neutral. The faces covered the entire 15-in. screen and were thus
almost the size of real faces. A single womans face was used to
reduce error variance in the reaction times (RTs).
Apparatus. A Pentium II computer controlled stimulus presentation. Facial responses were recorded with a SONY camcorder, positioned behind the monitor. A mirror on a tripod behind
the participant reflected the screen, such that the screen and the
participants face were simultaneously videotaped.
Procedure. Participants were instructed to rapidly and accurately imitate the facial expression on the screen. The tone was not
task relevant; participants were informed that tones were paired
equally often with all faces, and thus provided no information about
the upcoming face. Half of the participants were assigned to the head
condition, and half to the face condition. Each condition comprised 12
practice trials, followed by four blocks, each with 32 experimental
trials, separated by breaks. Each trial began with the instruction
Neutral face! for 2 s to ensure that the participants face was neutral
at the beginning of the next trial, followed by a fixation cross for 1 s.
Next the tone and the picture started simultaneously. The tone and
picture durations were 100 ms and 2 s, respectively. The picture was
followed by a blank screen for up to 8 s. Participants terminated the
blank screen and started the next trial with a key press.

TONES, FACES, AND HEAD MOVEMENTS

977

forth until the onset video frames of the stimulus, and the onset of
the correct response was identified. Only trials where the first
response was correct were scored as correct. If no response was
given, the trial counted as an error. One coder coded all trials of all
participants. A second coder coded two randomly chosen participants to determine interrater reliabilities (.81 and .91, computed
over 204 observations each). Videos were mute during coding such
that coders were blind to the tone manipulation. The data from one
participant had to be dropped because he left before the end of the
experiment to keep an appointment.

Results

Figure 2. The visual stimuli used in Experiment 1.

All participants also completed a control condition in which no

compatibility effect was expected. In the control condition, pictures
showed the woman with her head turned to the left or to the right.
Pitch again varied randomly. The orthogonal combination of head
position and pitch resulted in four conditions that were replicated 16
times. Half of the participants completed this condition before and
half after the experimental conditions. The control condition served as
a test of a baseline difference between the groups.1
Data analysis. The main dependent variable was the latency
of the facial or head response (Horstmann, in press). The video
recordings were analyzed offline. Each trial was played back and

Facial RTs below 180 ms or exceeding 1,480 ms were discarded

( 1%) to exclude prepotent and disorderly long responses from
the analysis (note: cut-offs are multiples of 40 ms, which is the
duration of one video frame). In the control task, mean correct RTs
were analyzed with a 2 (group: head vs. face) 2 (tone: high vs.
low) 2 (head movement: left vs. right) ANOVA, which revealed
a main effect for head movement only, F(1, 21) 9.59, p .01,
reflecting that the turn to the left was 6 ms slower than the turn to
the right (292 vs. 298 ms). All other effects were clearly nonsignificant, Fs 1.00. A corresponding error analysis showed no
main effects or interaction, Fs 1.00. Mean error rate was 3%.
Thus, the analysis of the control task revealed no differences for
the between-participants variable condition and also no differences
for the within-participants variable pitch. Errors are displayed in
Table 1.
For the face condition, mean RT was analyzed with a 2 (tone:
high vs. low) 2 (expression: happy vs. angry) ANOVA. It
revealed a Tone Expression interaction only, F(1, 11) 18.62,
p .001, 2 .63 (other Fs 1.59). Follow-up t tests revealed
significant differences for both expressions, both ts 2.7, ps
.01 (one-tailed). This was not attributable to a speedaccuracy
trade-off: a corresponding ANOVA of the error scores revealed the
same pattern of results F(1, 11) 9.48, p .010, 2 .46 (other
Fs 1). Errors were higher in the incompatible conditions (1.6%)
than in the compatible conditions (0.23%).
For the head condition, a corresponding 2 (tone: high vs. low)
2 (movement: up vs. down) ANOVA revealed a Tone Movement interaction only, F(1, 10) 6.86, p .025, 2 .41 (other
Fs 1). Follow-up t tests revealed significant differences for both
movement directions, t 1.9, p .04 (one-tailed). Again, the
RT-pattern was not attributable to a speedaccuracy trade-off: a
corresponding ANOVA of the error scores revealed a significant
interaction only, F(1, 10) 9.69, p .011, 2 .49 (other Fs
1). Errors were higher in the incompatible conditions (2.7%) than
in the compatible conditions (1.4%).

Discussion
Experiment 1 found a cross-modal compatibility effect in two
conditions. With a high tone, happiness was imitated faster than
1
Moreover, it was originally planned to use the control conditions as a
neutral baseline to determine whether a compatibility effect is attributable
to costs in incompatible or benefits in compatible conditions. However, as
will become clear in the results section, RTs depended on the task, so that
this baseline is problematic.

HORSTMANN AND ANSORGE

978
Table 1
Error Scores From Experiment 1

Results
Task

Compatibilty

Tone

Head

Face

Compatible
Compatible
Incompatible
Incompatible

High
Low
High
Low

7.4
3.7
8.2
13.9

0.8
1.6
5.5
7.3

anger, whereas with a low tone, anger was imitated faster than
happiness. Furthermore, with a high tone, an upward head movement was faster than the downward head movement, whereas with
a low tone, a downward movement was faster than the upward
movement.
The facial and head responses reported here are quick. The
latencies are similar to visuo-manual responses when stimulusresponse compatibility is high (e.g., Dutta & Proctor, 1992). This
is in line with Dimberg and Thunberg (1998), who also found
facial imitation to be fast (300 400 ms, as measured with EMG).
Some studies (e.g., Moody, McIntosh, Mann, & Weisser, 2007)
found somewhat higher latencies; there are, however, multiple
differences in the tasks, each of which might have altered response
latency.

Experiment 2
Experiment 1 showed that irrelevant tones in themselves, in the
absence of a task to process them, prime particular gestures and
facial expressions. However, was intentional processing of tonal
height discouraged by making tones irrelevant in Experiment 1?
While using the same primary task as in the face condition of
Experiments 1, Experiment 2 used a second task to direct participants attention away from tone pitch toward a nonrelated feature
of the tone: its left or right position. The requirement to focus on
tone position should strongly attenuate any tendency to willingly
encode pitch. An automatic effect, however, should survive this
manipulation.

Method
Participants. Fourteen students (13 women), with a mean
age of 22.8 years took part for 2 payment. Two additional cases
were tested but dropped because their facial responses lacked
sufficient distinctness.
Stimuli and procedure. These differed in two aspects from
the face condition in Experiment 1. Importantly, participants responded to tone location (the left or right through external speakers) by pressing the left key for the left tone and the right key for
the right tone. The response to the tone was unspeeded and
participants were clearly instructed to indicate tone location
always as the second response, after they had imitated the face.
Tone pitch and tone location were not correlated. As a minor
change, the pair of pictures, showing open mouth displays of
happiness and anger, was the same as in Horstmann (in press,
Experiments 2 and 3).

Mean correct facial RTs (see Figure 3) were analyzed with a 2

(tone: high vs. low) 2 (expression: friendly vs. angry) 2 (tone
location: left vs. right) ANOVA, which revealed a significant
Tone Expression interaction, F(1, 13) 23.7, p .001, 2
.64, and a marginally significant tone effect, F(1, 13) 4.1, p
.06, 2 .25. Smiles were imitated 27 ms faster with high than
with low tones, t(13) 2.93, p .05, and frowns were imitated
44 ms faster with low than with high tones, t(13) 5.86, p .001.
The other main effects and the interactions were not significant, all
Fs 1.9. Error rates were far too low (i.e., 1.0%) to warrant
further analysis.

Discussion
We found a clear congruency effect in a task in which willed
processing of pitch should be strongly attenuated by the secondary
task to report the position of the tone. Thus the present experiment
supported the claim that the compatibility effect between pitch and
facial expressions was attributable to automatic and not willed
processing of pitch.

General Discussion
The present study revealed robust sensory-motor coupling of
sounds and social gestures. Facial expressions of happiness and
upward head tilts were faster after high than low tones, whereas
facial expressions of anger and downward head tilts were faster
after low than after high tones. Quicker responses in compatible
than in incompatible conditions were observed in 20 of 23 participants in Experiment 1, and in 13 of 14 in Experiment 2, implying
quite a robust effect.2
The present experiments also show that the sensory-motor coupling is highly automatic. In Experiment 1, the tones were completely task-irrelevant and participants were instructed to ignore
them. In Experiment 2, tones were task-relevant, but tone pitch
was to be ignored because it varied orthogonally to the taskrelevant horizontal position of the tone.
For the first time, we found a sensory-motor coupling of relative
pitch and vertical head movement. This result adds to the existing
evidence for an embodied associative triangle between pitch, facial
expression, and vertical movement in the form of direct evidence
for associations between tone pitch and facial expressions and
associations between tone pitch and vertical movement.

Embodiment Versus Metaphor

In the Introduction we discussed an embodiment approach.
Embodiment motivated the present research particularly because
of the assumption of multimodal representations which readily
explains the automatic interaction between simple stimuli
tonesand motor responsesnonverbal behavior. However, the
association between verticality and valence has also been exam2

Some readers might regard the sample sizes as rather small, raising
doubts on the validity of the results. Note, however, that replication of
effects in small sample sizes might be a better indicator of validity than
large sample sizes (e.g., Cohen, 1994).

TONES, FACES, AND HEAD MOVEMENTS

Facial expression
570
High Tone
Low Tone
520

RT

470
420
370
320
friendly
angry
Expression
Figure 3. Results for Experiment 2. Error bars show the standard error of
the mean.

ined in research on conceptual metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson,

1980), which assumes that humans conceptualize abstract meaning
metaphorically in terms of perceptual concepts, such as magnitude
or space. In support of this account, Meier and colleagues (Meier
& Robinson, 2004; Meier, Robinson, & Clore, 2004) found valence to be associated with lightness (light vs. dark), vertical
position (high vs. low), and tone pitch (high vs. low). Thus one
might argue that the present results can also be explained by means
of conceptual metaphor.
However, while conceptual metaphor theory easily explains the
association between semantic concepts of height and valence, it is
not clear whether metaphorical meaning can explain the direct
effects of physical stimuli (tones, positions) on actual movements
(faces, head tilts). This is because the metaphor grounds conceptual meaning in physical dimensions; however, there is little requirement to metaphorically ground physical stimuli and physical
action.
Relatedly, the metaphor account is particularly superfluous in
understanding the meaning of emotions. Concepts, such as law
or news, are abstract. Their meaning profits from and might even
require grounding in fundamental perceptual attributes. Emotions
such as happiness, pride, anger, or fear, however, are concrete.
They can be used to ground abstract conceptual knowledge, but
they need not be grounded themselves. Emotions are among the
building blocks of cognitionlike the perception of space, emotions are experiential priors. One might argue that emotions are
fleeting, and perceptual grounding would be needed for this reason. However, this is true for virtually all perceptual phenomena,
both in the realm of exteroception, such as movement, and interoception, such as thirst or hunger. It turns out that if we question the
grounding of the perceptual priors, we are left devoid of any
grounding principles. To summarize our position: while we agree
that abstract concepts have no single perceptual grounding and
thus need to be grounded metaphorically, emotions are grounds par
excellence, being connected with distinctive feeling states, motivations, expression patterns, and physiology.

979

Embodied Multimodal Emotion Representations or

Just Tone-Verticality Associations?
The present results are consistent with the use of multimodal
embodied representations for nonverbal signaling. On this account,
expressions of happiness and anger are differentiated in vocalization and facial expressions (Horstmann, in press). By the same
token, signaling happiness entails upward movements (lip corners,
eyebrows), whereas signaling anger entails downward movements
(lip corners, jaw, brow). Consequently, high tones go together with
upward movements and low tones with downward movements.
Alternatively, however, the present results are also compatible
with another interpretation: tones prime the upward and downward
movements entailed in emotional faces. This verticality hypothesis
has the advantage of parsimony: It explains the present results with
only one principle. The disadvantage of this hypothesis is that it
does not (or only poorly) explain the established connection between pitch and emotion (see Introduction).
It might well be, however, that the typical approach in experimental psychology of dissecting causes is an unsuited oversimplification when applied to the unconfounding of tone-expression and
tone-verticality associations. Embodied associations between gestures and vocalization must have evolved together during phylogeny. It is very likely that embodied associations between modalities developed as a means of redundant coding of the most
important social communicative signals. Embodied associations
persisted in humans as a means of nonverbal signaling, at least to
secure reliable communication during preverbal phases of ontogenetic development. Under this perspective, telling apart the supremacy of tone-expression and tone-verticality associations takes
the form of a chicken-and-egg problem.

Emotion Categories Versus Valence

In this paper, we endorse an emotion rather than a valence view.
That is, we assume our effects to be specific for particular expression categoriesanger and happinessrather than for a dimension of valence. One reason is that this research originated from a
social signaling perspective (cf. Fridlund, 1994), where nonverbal
signals are assumed to have a more specific meaning than I am
good or its negation. For example, the most prominent negative
emotions, anger and sadness, may share the feature of being
negative but are on opposite poles with respect to activity (with
anger being high and sadness being low in activity; Russell, 1980)
and with respect to the direction of behavior (approach vs. avoidance; Harmon-Jones, 2003).

The Emotional Meaning of Head Tilt

Head tilt is a gesture with social meaning and a frequently
displayed nonverbal behavior. However, the emotional meanings
of head tilt are manifold. For one, tilting the head up can be seen
as a display of superiority, mastery, or dominance. For example,
Zahavi and Zahavi (1997) interpret raising the chin as a costly
superiority signal: the chin is vulnerable in a fight, and presenting
it conveys self-assurance and scorns the offender. For another,
tilting the head down can be seen as a display of despair (e.g.,
Stepper & Strack, 1993) but also as an intention movement (Heinroth, 1911), being part of an attack, simultaneously indicating the

HORSTMANN AND ANSORGE

980

direction of movement of the attack (forward) and already assuming a defensive position (shielding the throat from blows). The
association of a downward movement of the head with both defeat
and attack supports Fridlunds (1994) conjecture that the social
meaning of expressions is not fixed but depends on the context.

Conclusion
We present new evidence for an embodied associative triangle
among relative pitch, vertical direction, and facial emotion. This
associative triangle is inferred on the basis of automatic cuing of
facial signals by relative pitch. Theoretically, the present results
add to the growing evidence supporting an embodiment account
that emphasizes multimodal representations as the basis of cognition, emotion, and action.

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Received March 31, 2010

Revision received November 9, 2010
Accepted November 15, 2010