THE USE OF BODY MOVEMENTS AND GESTURES

AS CUES TO EMOTIONS IN YOUNGER AND

OLDER ADULTS
Joann Montepare, Elissa Koff, Deborah Zaitchik, and Marilyn Albert

ABSTRACT: Eighty-two younger and older adults participated in a two-part study of

the decoding of emotion through body movements and gestures. In the first part,
younger and older adults identified emotions depicted in brief videotaped displays
of young adult actors portraying emotional situations. In each display, the actors
were silent and their faces were electronically blurred in order to isolate the body
cues to emotion. Although both groups made accurate emotion identifications well
above chance levels, older adults made more overall errors, and this was especially
true for negative emotions. Moreover, their errors were more likely to reflect the
misidentification of emotional displays as neutral in content. In the second part,
younger and older adults rated the videotaped displays using scales reflecting sev-
eral movement dimensions (e.g., form, tempo, force, and movement). The ratings of
both age groups were in high agreement and provided reliable information about
particular body cues to emotion. The errors made by older adults were linked to
reactions to exaggerated or ambiguous body cues.

Although the processing of emotional information has been studied

extensively in young adults, research pertaining to age-related differences
across the adult years has been limited. The research that has been done
has focused largely on age-related differences in adults' personal experi-
ence, expression and control of emotions (Gross, Carstensen, Pasupathi,
Tsai, Skorpen, & Hsu, 1997; Schulz, 1985). In contrast, relatively little re-
search has examined age-related differences in adults' perceptions of other
people's emotions. Moreover, the scant research that has examined age-
related differences in the perception of emotions has focused primarily on

Joann Montepare, Emerson College; Elissa Koff, Wellesley College; Deborah Zaitchik and
Marilyn Albert, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
This research was supported by National Institute on Aging grant # P01-AG04390. The
authors would like to thank Dr. Mary Hyde for her invaluable assistance with data manage-
ment.
Address correspondence to Dr. Marilyn Albert, Massachusetts General Hospital, Psychia-
try/Gerontology (149-9124), 149 13th Street, Charlestown, MA 02129.

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 23(2), Summer 1999

© 1999 Human Sciences Press, Inc. 133
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JOURNAL OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR

the decoding of emotions from facial and vocal cues (Allen & Brosgole,
1993; Malatesta, Izard, Culver, & Nicolich, 1987; McDowell, Harrison, &
Demaree, 1994; Moreno, Borod, Welkowitz, & Alpert, 1990; Moreno,
Borod, Welkowitz, & Alpert, 1993). As a result, surprisingly little is known
about the extent to which body movements and gestures provide reliable
cues to emotions across the life span, although such information may have
the advantage of primacy during social interactions because it is the first
thing observed when people approach each other.
The aim of the present research was twofold. First, we sought to ex-
tend knowledge about age-related differences in the processing of emo-
tional information by comparing the ability of younger and older adults to
use body movements and gestures to identify emotions. Second, we sought
to gather age-comparative data on the specific movement qualities that
support the communication of emotions through the use of body cues. In
addition to a theoretical interest in examining age-related differences in the
perception of emotion from body cues, understanding more about changes
in the processing of emotional information with age and the specific move-
ment characteristics that communicate emotions has potential practical im-
portance. With the increasing number of elderly adults in the population it
is important to know: (1) if the ability to process emotion, implicitly and
explicitly, and across a variety of modalities, declines with age; (2) whether
older adults can understand the emotional communications of younger
adults; (3) which movement qualities clearly and reliably communicate dif-
ferent emotions; and (4) whether age group differences, if observed, pertain
more to one class of emotions than another (e.g., negative versus positive).
The latter point is especially important from an applied perspective be-
cause the identification of these qualities may suggest interventions that
could improve interpersonal communication with older adults.
To achieve the foregoing goals, groups of younger and older adults
viewed brief clips of videotaped displays of actors spontaneously dramatiz-
ing emotional situations and made judgments about either the actors' emo-
tions or the actors' movements. Although it may be argued that dramatiza-
tions of body movement displays lack ecological validity, we chose to
utilize them for several reasons. First, their use allowed us to be sure that
our displays reflected common themes in everyday settings so that poten-
tial age-group differences could not be attributed to differences in older
and younger adults' familiarity with the emotional content of the displays.
Second, it was felt that the use of familiar themes portrayed in dynamic
displays of real people interacting would provide a sufficiently sensitive
test of age-group differences in light of research suggesting that differences
are more apparent when realistic-looking stimuli are used. More specifi-
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JOANN MONTEPARE, ELISSA KOFF, DEBORAH ZAITCHIK, MARILYN ALBERT

cally, research has found that older adults make more errors than younger
adults in identifying emotional expressions when dynamic displays of real
faces expressing emotion are used as stimuli (Malatesta et al., 1987), as
opposed to when schematic drawings of cartoon characters, pictures of
chimeric faces, or still photographs of actors posing facial expressions are
used as stimuli where no age differences have been reported (Allen &
Brosgole, 1993; Moreno et al., 1990; Moreno et al., 1993). Third, it was
felt that the dramatizations would provide the kind of emotionally rich
information necessary to explore which specific body cues support the
communication of emotions, as suggested by Wallbott and Scherer (1986).
These authors have argued that, although researchers studying emotion
perception should continue to attempt to obtain naturalistic samples of
emotional expressions, the use of simulated expressions has value in its
own right. Knowing how perceivers of different ages react to dramatized
emotional expressions can provide useful information in a culture heavily
ensconced in the media and mass communication, especially if these reac-
tions subsequently can be compared to perceptions of more naturally oc-
curring expressions.
Previous research exploring age-related differences in the perception
of emotion from facial and vocal cues has uncovered some evidence for
age-group differences as a function of the valence of the emotional expres-
sion. For example, McDowell et al. (1994) found that older adults were
significantly less accurate than younger adults at identifying negative and
neutral facial expressions. Similarly, Allen and Brosgole (1993), in addition
to finding an overall decline in the ability of the elderly to identify specific
emotions from vocal cues, found that older adults were less able to dis-
criminate among vocal displays of emotion when they included anger.
Decrements in older adults' apparent sensitivity to negative cues to emo-
tion are consistent with research indicating that age-related declines in the
experience of emotion are more reliable for negative than for positive emo-
tions (Barrick, Hutchinson, & Deckers, 1989; Gross et al., 1997).
It has been argued that the apparent age-related difference in decod-
ing ability that has been observed may reflect older adults' feelings of un-
certainty or indecision in response to task demands (Malatesta et al., 1987).
Consistent with this suggestion, these authors noted that older adults not
only made more overall errors than younger adults in decoding negative
emotions depicted in dynamic facial displays, but also were more likely to
attribute more interest expressions to displays, which in their experience
tends to occur under conditions of uncertainty. Other researchers have sug-
gested that declines in right hemispheric functioning with age contribute to
decrements in the perception of facial emotions (Levine & Levy, 1986; Mo-
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JOURNAL OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR

reno et al., 1990, Obler, Woodward, & Albert, 1984), but research has
failed to find convincing evidence to support this hypothesis (e.g., Moreno
et al., 1990). Likewise, some researchers have argued that the observed age
group difference is attributable to age-related differences in variables such
as demographic background, cognitive ability, or visuo-perceptual func-
tioning; however, this hypothesis also has not been well supported (e.g.,
Moreno et al., 1993). These conflicting views point to the importance of
comparing overall age-group differences in the accuracy of emotion identi-
fications as well as differences in the kinds of errors younger and older
adults make.
Although there are no studies of age-related differences in adults' per-
ceptions of emotions from people's body cues, research has shown that
variations in body movements and gestures convey important information
about people's emotions. In particular, body movements (e.g., gait, body
postures) and gestures (e.g., hand positions) have been found to reliably
communicate emotional messages, whether they are posed, presented
through dance, or elicited during scenes portraying an interpersonal
event (Boone, 1996; Boone & Cunningham, 1998; de Meijer, 1989; Koff,
Zaitchik, Montepare, & Albert, 1999; Kudoh & Matsumoto, 1985; Mon-
tepare, Goldstein, & Clausen, 1987; Rosenthal, Hall, DiMatteo, Rogers, &
Archer, 1979; Sloman, Berridge, Homatidis, Hunter, & Duck, 1982; Sogon
& Masutani, 1989; van Meel, Verburgh & de Meijer, 1993; Walk & Homan,
1984). Moreover, research designed to identify the specific cues that con-
tribute to the perception of different emotions has revealed several dimen-
sions along which different emotions can be distinguished (Aronoff, Woike,
& Hyman, 1992; Boone, 1996; Boone & Cunningham, 1998; Bull, 1983;
de Meijer, 1989; Frey & von Cranach 1973; Montepare et al., 1987; Mon-
tepare & McArthur, 1988; Rime, Boulanger, Laubin, Richer, Stroobants,
1985; Wolff, 1943). In general, this research has indicated that emotion-
based movement cues can be characterized by variations in their form,
tempo, force, and direction.
The present research compared the extent to which older and younger
adults' perceptions of emotions from body cues are supported by these
qualities. Although it was expected that emotion-related body cues could
be differentiated on the basis of specific movement qualities, no predic-
tions were made regarding age-related differences in the perception of
these cues given the lack of research that has examined possible age ef-
fects. A detailed analysis of accurate and inaccurate judgments made by
older and younger adults was also conducted. On the basis of the available
research, it was predicted that older adults would show lower overall accu-
racy than younger adults in decoding actors' affect from dynamic displays
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JOANN MONTEPARE, ELISSA KOFF, DEBORAH ZAITCHIK, MARILYN ALBERT

of their bodies. In addition, older adults were expected to make more er-
rors that reflected uncertainty. Moreover, it was further predicted that older
adults would show the least proficiency at decoding negative emotions
depicted in body cues.

Method

Participants
Eighty-two adults participated in this study. The majority of participants
were Caucasian. Forty-one participants (15 men and 26 women) were col-
lege students ranging in age from 18 to 22 years (mean age = 18.7 years)
and were enrolled in either a class in introductory psychology or behav-
ioral statistics. Participation in research was a course requirement and stu-
dents received partial experimental credit for their part in this study.
Forty-one participants (20 men and 21 women) were community-
dwelling adults ranging in age from 65 to 89 years (mean age = 76.5
years) with a mean educational level of 15.4 years. Care was taken to
recruit healthy older participants who did not differ from younger partici-
pants in noticeable ways that might obscure the interpretation of any ob-
served age effects. To this end, older participants were recruited through
the Harvard Cooperative Program on Aging, a registry of older individuals
organized by investigators at Harvard Medical School who conduct re-
search on aging. Potential participants completed a detailed screening
evaluation to assure that they had no visual, physical, or cognitive impair-
ments that might interfere with their ability to perform the experimental
task. All research participants provided informed consent.
Approximately equal numbers of adults from each age group com-
pleted one of two sets of rating scales. One set of scales reflected the type
of emotion being displayed and was rated by one group of 21 younger
participants (10 men and 11 women, mean age = 18.6 years) and one
group of 20 older participants (9 men and 11 women, mean age = 76.0
years). The other set of scales reflected specific movement characteristics
and was rated by another group of 20 younger participants (5 men and 15
women, mean age = 18.9 years) and a group of 21 older participants (11
men and 10 women, mean age = 75.3 years). It was important to have
different groups of participants complete different sets of ratings in order to
reduce the likelihood that any observed differences in emotion identifica-
tions and perceptions of body cues merely reflected the raters' implicit
theories about how emotions and body cues go together.
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Emotion Displays

The stimuli consisted of 76 three-second videotaped clips selected

from sixteen behavioral scenes depicting emotion through body movement
and gesture (Koff et al., 1997). The scenes were created using a procedure
similar to one used by Wallbott and Scherer (1986) in their study of behav-
ioral cues to emotion recognition. The sixteen scenes consisted of drama-
tizations by a young adult male and female actor depicting four instances
each of happy, sad, and angry emotions, and a neutral situation. Hence-
forth, the term emotion will include the neutral condition.
In each scene, the actors were provided with a brief description of the
emotional situation to be portrayed. Two actors were used in the scenes
because it was felt that the opportunity for interaction would increase the
spontaneity and naturalness of the dramatizations.1 Although the theme of
each scene was loosely scripted beforehand to insure their familiarity to
raters, the actors were not told what movements and gestures to use to
communicate the targeted emotions.
The stimulus clips were created using a unitization procedure similar
to the one described by Newtson, Engquist, and Bois (1976) for studying
the processing of social stimuli. First, two research assistants reviewed the
original scenes and identified discrete movement clips on the basis of their
subjective and independent impressions. These clips were then reviewed
by the experimenters to insure their general agreement with the choices
made by the research assistants. For example, four separate movement
clips identified in one of the happy scenes included the male actor (1)
raising a letter in his hand while sitting down in a chair, (2) moving papers
on a desk and leaning back in his chair, (3) putting his feet on the desk
while reading the letter, and (4) clapping his hands. The resultant move-
ment clips were very brief, consisting of actions lasting approximately three
seconds. Clips that were shorter than three seconds were combined in or-
der to equate the length of the clips and the total number of clips obtained
from each scene. The unitization procedure identified 19 clips for each of
the four emotion conditions, resulting in a total of 76 video clips.
Following the unitization phase, the video clips were professionally
edited onto master experimental tapes. Segment numbers were inserted
before each presentation and two orders of presentation of the clips were
created. The first order consisted of a random sequence of the clips; the
second order was the reverse of the first.2 The randomization of the clips in
this manner reduced the possibility that participants' evaluations merely
reflected inferential judgments based on information derived from underly-
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JOANN MONTEPARE, ELISSA KOFF, DEBORAH ZAITCHIK, MARILYN ALBERT

ing scripts as opposed to information derived from body movements and

gestures.
In each of the clips selected for inclusion, the actors' faces were elec-
tronically blurred and the dialogues that initially were part of the scenes
were eliminated so that the actors' bodies provided the only source of
emotion information. Each clip began with the actors portrayed in freeze
frame, in order to enable the raters to prepare to evaluate the scene. Six
practice clips preceded the 76 clips to be rated.

Identification of Emotions
One group of 20 older and 21 younger research participants were
asked to identify the dominant emotion they perceived in each video clip
using a rating procedure similar to the one used by Montepare et al. (1987)
in their study of the identification of emotion from gait cues. Specifically,
participants were given a checklist labeled with four emotions (i.e., happy,
sad, angry, neutral) and instructed to record the emotion being expressed
after viewing each video clip. They were told that they could record the
same emotion as many times as they wished and that guessing was accept-
able. In addition, they were told that they could not change any of their
answers once they were recorded. This procedure was used in order to
determine the extent to which certain emotions might be confused
with others. It also reduced the likelihood that participants would make
correct or incorrect judgments by the process of elimination. From these
responses, the percentage of older and younger participants who judged
each clip correctly and incorrectly was determined. The mean percentage
of correct scores across clips was used as the dependent measure in subse-
quent analyses assessing the accuracy of older and younger adults' emo-
tion identifications.

Ratings of Body Cues

A second group of 21 older and 20 younger research participants
rated the 76 video clips with respect to six fundamental characteristics of
movement that captured the dimensions of form, tempo, force, and direc-
tion explored in previous research on dynamic sources of emotion infor-
mation (Aronoff et al., 1992; Boone, 1996; Boone & Cunningham, 1998;
Bull, 1983; de Meijer, 1989; Frey & von Cranach, 1973; Montepare et al.,
1987; Rime et al., 1985; Wolff, 1943). Research participants rated six as-
pects of movement in each video clip on a 7-point scale that was anchored
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with verbal descriptors, as follows: very smooth-very jerky, very stiff-very

loose, very soft-very hard, very slow-very fast, very expanded-very contrac-
ted, almost no action-a lot of action. To minimize memory demands of
rating six different movement qualities after viewing a 3-second movement
display, only three randomly selected movement qualities were rated after
initially viewing a clip; the three remaining movement qualities were rated
after viewing the clip a second time. The order of presentation of rating
scales was counterbalanced within each group of raters.

Procedure
Younger and older adults participated in separate viewing sessions in
groups of about five individuals. During each viewing session, participants
sat at a table or at individual desks in front of a video monitor used for
presenting the video clips. After being told that the study sought to deter-
mine the extent to which individuals can identify people's emotional state
from their body movements, and completing forms assessing general back-
ground information (i.e., age, gender, race), participants were given a
packet of rating scales and instructed how to complete them. During the
instruction period, participants were given an opportunity to view several
video clips generated from the original scenes and to complete several
ratings in order to acquaint them with the nature of the information they
would be judging and the rating procedure.

Results

Accuracy and Errors in Emotion Identification

The first set of analyses evaluated age-group differences in the pro-
cessing of emotional information by comparing the decoding skills of
younger and older adults in each of the experimental conditions.3 To this
end, the mean percentages of correct and incorrect emotion identifications
averaged across video clips in each emotion condition were computed for
older and younger adults. These means appear in Table 1.
Next, a 2 x 4 (Age Group X Emotion Type) analysis of variance with
emotion type treated as a repeated measure was performed on the mean
percentage of correct identifications. As predicted, a significant main effect
for age group was found and showed that older adults made fewer correct
identifications than younger adults, F(1, 39) = 20.67, p< .001, (mean
older = 77.90; mean younger = 85.71). Moreover, consistent with the
prediction that older and younger adults would differ in their sensitivity to
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JOANN MONTEPARE, ELISSA KOFF, DEBORAH ZAITCHIK, MARILYN ALBERT

TABLE 1

Mean Percent Correct and Incorrect Emotion Identifications Made by

Older and Younger Adults

Emotion identified 7

Correct emotion Neutral Happy Angry Sad

Neutral
Younger 95.74* 3.01 1.25 .00
Older 92.34* 2.37 4.50 .79
Happy
Younger 12.28 73.68* 13.78 .25
Older 15.07 71.92* 12.49 .53
Angry
Younger 8.50 .50 90.99* .00
Older 16.59 2.12 78.66* 2.63
Sad
Younger 14.27 1.31 2.01 82.41*
Older 23.95 5.96 1.33 68.77*

Note. Means were computed across the video clips within each emotion category.
Asterisks indicate means which were significantly greater than 25% chance level.

emotional valence, a significant interaction effect also was found, F(3,

117) = 4.64, p < .003, and post-hoc analyses revealed that older adults
made significantly fewer correct identifications of sad clips than younger
adults. Although older adults were more proficient at identifying angry
than sad clips, they identified angry clips with less accuracy than younger
adults. On the other hand, no age-group differences were observed for the
identification of happy or neutral clips. Finally, a significant main effect for
emotion type was found, F(3, 117) = 6.51, p < .001, and post-hoc tests
revealed that neutral clips were identified with a higher degree of accuracy
than emotional clips. Moreover, angry clips were identified more accu-
rately than sad or happy clips, which were identified with similar levels of
accuracy.
In addition to the foregoing tests, one-sample t-tests were performed
within each age group to determine whether the mean percentage of cor-
rect identifications for each emotion type differed from a chance level of
25 percent. As shown in Table 1, both groups performed significantly
above chance levels when identifying neutral, happy, sad, and angry dis-
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plays. Thus, although older and younger adults differed in their relative
overall skill at decoding emotional displays, both groups nevertheless
made systematically accurate identifications.
One possible explanation for this pattern of effects is that the errors
made by older adults reflected uncertainty, as suggested by Malatesta et al.
(1987). To examine this hypothesis, the confusion errors made by each age
group were computed (see Table 1) and t-tests were used to compare the
groups. Consistent with an uncertainty explanation, older adults were more
likely than younger adults to evaluate sad and angry emotional scenes as
neutral in content, t(39) = 2.70, p< .01 and t(39) = 2.92, p<.01, re-
spectively. Happy scenes were not confused with neutral ones with any
greater frequency by older adults than by the younger adults, and there
was no difference between the age groups in the accuracy with which they
rated neutral scenes.

Body Cues to Emotion

The second set of analyses assessed the extent to which younger and
older adults differentiated the movement-based emotions on the basis of
specific movement characteristics. Thus, in these analyses the video clips
served as the unit of analysis. As a first step in these analyses, Cronbach's
alpha was calculated for each movement rating made by adults from each
age group to determine interrater agreement and the suitability of the aver-
aged ratings for subsequent analyses. Cronbach's alpha was computed
twice: first, on all 76 videotaped clips and then on a subset of 32 clips
where the emotion type had been correctly identified by at least 80% of
adults from each age group. Both analyses showed that older and younger
adults demonstrated considerable consistency in their ratings of the body
cues that were assessed. The accuracy of each of the ratings was 86% or
better.
Having demonstrated acceptable interrater reliability, mean ratings
were computed for each video segment by averaging across younger and
older adults' ratings of each segment within each emotion type. The mean
ratings reflecting the subset of 32 clips were then subjected to separate
2 X 4 (Age Group X Emotion Type) analyses of variance, with emotion
type treated as a repeated measure for each of the six movement cues.
Only ratings reflecting the 32 clips where the emotion type was correctly
identified with 80% accuracy or greater were used in these analyses in
order to insure that the observed differences in body cue ratings accurately
reflected differences in emotion type. The mean ratings of these clips within
and across age groups for each emotion type are presented in Table 2.
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JOANN MONTEPARE, ELISSA KOFF, DEBORAH ZAITCHIK, MARILYN ALBERT

TABLE 2

Mean Body Cue Ratings for the 32 Video Clips Identified with 80% or
Greater Accuracy by Younger (Y) and Older (O) Adults and Both Groups
Combined (T)
Emotion category

Neutral Happy Angry Sad

0 Y T O Y T O Y T 0 Y T

Smooth-
jerky 3.11 3.19 3.15 4.19 4.71 4.45 5.66 6.05 5.85 3.09 3.13 3.11
Stiff-loose 4.87 4.88 4.88 4.83 4.81 4.82 3.49 2.50 2.99 4.57 4.06 4.32
Slow-fast 3.01 3.11 3.06 4.72 4.97 4.84 4.85 5.30 5.07 2.98 3.05 3.01
Soft-hard 2.80 3.22 3.01 3.53 3.62 3.58 5.42 5.96 5.69 3.11 3.59 3.35
Expanded-
Contrac-
ted 5.17 5.07 5.12 3.45 2.82 3.14 3.68 3.31 3.50 4.92 4.62 4.77
No action-a
lot 2.62 2.09 2.36 4.90 4.62 4.76 4.85 4.91 4.88 2.89 3.06 2.97

Note. Higher values reflect higher poles of the rating scales.

The analyses revealed significant main effects for emotion type for each of
the six movement ratings as follows: jerky, F(3, 42)) = 97.04; loose, F(3,
42) = 71.80; fast, F(3, 42) = 71.65; hard, F(3, 42) = 108.70; contracted,
F(3, 42) = 33.41; action-filled, F(3, 42) = 49.84; all ps < .001. Post-hoc
analyses showed that angry clips were rated as the most jerky whereas sad
and neutral clips were rated as the most smooth. Happy clips were rated as
more smooth than angry clips, although more jerky than sad or neutral
clips. Angry clips were rated as stiffer and harder than other emotion clips.
On the other hand, happy and neutral clips were rated to be the least stiff
and sad clips were rated as moderately stiff. Happy and angry clips were
judged as faster than sad and neutral ones. Also, happy and angry clips
were judged to be more expanded in comparison to sad and neutral clips.
Moreover, sad and neutral clips were rated as showing significantly less
action than angry and happy ones.4
In summary, the analyses of body cues indicated that older and youn-
ger adults reliably differentiated emotions along similar dimensions:
displays of happiness were seen as relatively jerky, loose, fast, hard, ex-
panded, and full of action; displays of anger were characterized as being
very jerky, stiff, fast, hard, expanded and also full of action; and displays of
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JOURNAL OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR

sadness were perceived to be very smooth, loose, slow, soft, contracted,

and lacking in action. Neutral expressions were rated similarly to sad dis-
plays in that they were perceived as relatively smooth, loose, slow, soft,
very contracted and inactive. Interestingly, researchers examining facial
displays of emotion have also found that neutral displays are often per-
ceived to have a sadness-like demeanor (Malatesta, Fiore, & Messina,
1987; Mueser, Grau, Sussman, & Rosen, 1984).

Relations Between Body Cues and Decoding Accuracy

A final set of analyses explored age-related differences in relations be-
tween body cues and decoding accuracy using a framework suggested by
Wallbott and Scherer (1986). Given the body cue differences observed
across the emotion conditions, one would expect that the accuracy of de-
coding emotions should be high in clips where the body cues were used
correctly. In contrast, the incorrect use of body cues should result in low
accuracy. For instance, accuracy should be greater for angry clips that con-
tain more jerky movements insofar as angry displays were distinguished
from other displays by their less smooth, jerkier movements. On the other
hand, accuracy should be greater for sad clips that contain smooth and
slow movements, as these displays were characterized by such qualities.
To test these expectations, correlations were computed between mean
body cue ratings and mean accuracy scores for older and younger adults
within each emotion condition using the original 76 videotaped clips.
These correlations appear in Table 3.
Consistent with the body cues that characterized happy displays, older
and younger adults demonstrated greater accuracy for happy clips rated as
more action-filled and containing looser, faster, and more expanded move-
ments. Consistent with the cues that characterized angry clips, greater ac-
curacy was found for angry action-filled clips with jerkier, stiffer, faster,
harder, and more expanded movements. Accuracy in the judgment of neu-
tral displays was greater for neutral clips containing smoother, slower, and
somewhat looser, softer, and less active movements.
In contrast to the movements found to characterize sad displays,
greater accuracy was associated with more action-filled sad clips contain-
ing jerkier, stiffer, harder, and faster movements. Moreover, these associa-
tions were especially strong for older adults. It has been suggested that
such reversals may reflect decoders' reactions to the overemphasis of rele-
vant cues in the movement displays, i.e., if cues are used in an exaggerated
fashion by actors in dramatized displays, the accuracy of decoding emo-
tions may be affected (Wallbott & Scherer, 1986). To examine this possi-
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JOANN MONTEPARE, ELISSA KOFF, DEBORAH ZAITCHIK, MARILYN ALBERT

TABLE 3

Correlations of Movement Cues with Younger and Older Adults' Mean

Accuracy for Each Emotion Using All 76 Video Clips
Emotion

Cue Neutral Happy Angry Sad

Smooth-jerky
Younger -.50* .11 .80*** .17
Older -.59** .01 .84*** .61**
Stiff-loose
Younger .34 .55** -.25 -.34
Older .50* .45* -.59** -.71***
Slow-fast
Younger -.48* .61** .85*** .17
Older -.40 + .70*** .76*** .55**
Soft-hard
Younger -.26 -.48* .53** .48*
Older -.55** -.24 .77*** .64**
Expanded-contracted
Younger .32 -.66*** -.59** .03
Older .11 -.66*** -.52* -.19
No action-a lot
Younger -.34 .57** .76*** .31
Older -.36 .66*** .68*** .55*
+ p < .10; *p < 05, **p < .01 ; ***p < .001.

bility, median-splits were used to divide the emotion clips into those that
evidenced high accuracy (above the median) and those that evidenced low
accuracy (below the median) within each age group. Next, t-tests were
performed within each age group comparing differences in mean cue rat-
ings of high-accuracy and low-accuracy clips (see Table 4). These tests
revealed a pattern of significant differences between high-accuracy and
low-accuracy sadness clips decoded by older adults consistent with the
proposed explanation. More specifically, although sadness was charac-
terized by comparatively smoother, looser, slower, softer, and less active
movements, clips associated with low-accuracy for older adults were sig-
nificantly less action-filled and contained even smoother, looser, slower,
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TABLE 4

Differences in Movement Cues Between Low-Accuracy (LA) and High-

Accuracy (HA) Clips Using All 76 Video Clips

Emotion

Neutral Happy Angry Sad

LA HA LA HA LA HA LA HA

Younger adults
Smooth-jerky 3.61 3.36 4.67 4.83 5.36 5.92 2.99 3.08
Stiff-loose 4.81 4.65 4.10 4.66 2.86 2.60 4.04 3.99
Slow-fast 3.68 3.20 4.66 5.02 4.76 5.23 2.79 3.01
Soft-hard 3.36 3.28 4.08 3.73 5.32 5.86 3.26 3.47
Expanded-contracted 4.65 4.93 3.58 2.92 3.42 3.57 4.84 4.86
No Action-a lot 2.55 2.31 3.97 4.60 4.55 4.66 2.45 2.74

Older adults
Smooth-jerky 3.85 3.18 4.48 4.17 4.83 5.52 2.44 3.21
Stiff-loose 4.55 4.85 4.29 4.88 3.77 3.58 5.00 4.53
Slow-fast 3.41 3.03 4.05 4.79 4.32 4.78 2.40 3.01
Soft-hard 3.43 2.92 3.89 3.62 4.69 5.33 2.47 3.21
Expanded-contracted 4.92 5.04 4.25 3.25 3.83 3.63 5.28 4.92
No Action-a lot 3.06 2.67 3.88 5.07 4.28 4.77 2.32 2.92

Note. Means in bold were significantly different at p < .05.

and softer movements than clips associated with high-accuracy. It should

be noted that that the cues associated with low-accuracy in sad clips paral-
leled the cues associated with high-accuracy in neutral clips.

Discussion

Research on the communication of emotion has generally assumed that the

perception of emotion is more closely linked with facial or vocal expres-
sions than with bodily displays. As such, comparatively more research has
focused attention on the perception of emotions from facial and vocal cues
than from body cues. Moreover, the research that has been done has
seldom questioned the extent to which adults' perceptions of emotions
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JOANN MONTEPARE, ELISSA KOFF, DEBORAH ZAITCHIK, MARILYN ALBERT

change or differ with advancing age. The available research that has ex-
plored age-related differences suggests that with age there is a decline in
the ability to decode emotional expressions from dynamic facial cues. In
contrast, the present research indicates that adults are able to make effec-
tive use of dynamic body cues to identify emotions well into old age. How-
ever, the present research also indicates that younger and older adults nev-
ertheless exhibit a difference in their relative skill level, especially with
respect to the perception of negative emotions. More specifically, the pre-
sent research showed that although both older and younger adults recog-
nized emotions from 3-second samples of body movements and gestures
with above chance levels of accuracy, older adults made more overall de-
coding errors. Moreover, this was especially true when they were evaluat-
ing negative as opposed to positive displays of emotion.
Why might older adults be less proficient than younger adults at using
body cues to identify emotions? The examination of accurate identifica-
tions and confusion errors conducted in the present study provides several
insights. These analyses not only showed that older adults made more
overall errors than younger adults, but also that they were more likely to
misidentify emotional displays as neutral in content. One explanation for
this pattern of responding, as suggested by Malatesta et al. (1987), is that
older adults' errors reflected uncertainty or caution in their judgments, per-
haps in response to the difficulty of the task, or even their apprehensions
about performing well. Although the present study used familiar themes in
the creation of the displays in an attempt to equate the level of task diffi-
culty for the two age groups, it is possible that additional controls are nec-
essary to achieve this goal. For example, it may also be necessary to use
familiar targets. Indeed, Malatesta et al. (1987) found that although older
adults made more errors overall than younger adults when identifying
emotional expressions, they were better at identifying the facial expressions
of similar-aged peers than of younger adults, suggesting that familiarity may
be an important mediator of apparent age-related differences in sensitivities
to emotion cues. Whether an age-congruency effect exists with respect to
the decoding of body cues to emotion is an important question for future
research. It would also be informative to explore adults' performance ex-
pectations in light of their actual performance.
Consistent with previous research, our analyses also indicated that
older adults showed less accuracy at identifying negative displays in com-
parison to younger adults, and this was especially true for displays of sad-
ness. The foregoing analysis of variations in accuracy levels within each
emotion condition also revealed that older adults were less accurate at
decoding sad clips when they were characterized by exaggerated cues,
consistent with the findings of Wallbott and Scherer (1986). Moreover, it
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appeared that older adults were more likely to interpret these clips as neu-
tral in content. Again, this pattern of responding may reflect caution on the
part of older adults in light of task demands and ambiguity of the stimulus
information. Although speculative, this pattern of responding may also re-
flect the more general process of emotional control suggested by Gross et
al. (1997), whereby aging adults engage in selective strategies to regulate
or reduce the experience of aversive, negative emotional events. That is, it
may be argued that older adults resist interpreting emotional events nega-
tively when cues are available that can be used to evaluate them in a less
negative manner as one way of controlling potentially negative experi-
ences. Exploring links between older adults' control of their personal emo-
tional experiences and their interpretation of emotional cues in future re-
search should prove to be instructive on this topic.
The present study also identified several cues that reliably differentiate
happy, sad, angry, and neutral emotions communicated through body
movements and gestures. The present study also indicated that older and
younger adults differentiated emotions communicated by body movements
along similar dimensions. For example, movements in angry displays were
characterized by variations in velocity and force, and accompanied by
abrupt changes in tempo and direction, as well as angularity or sharpness
in body form (i.e., very jerky, stiff, hard, fast, and action-filled), as sug-
gested by previous research (Aronoff et al., 1992; Boone, 1996; de Meijer,
1989; Montepare et al., 1987; Wallbott & Scherer, 1986). Movements in
displays of sadness lacked action and were rated as relatively contracted,
soft, and smooth, as reported in previous studies (de Meijer, 1989; Monte-
pare et al., 1987; Wallbott & Scherer, 1986). Movements in happy displays
were judged to be expanded, and to be action-filled, loose, fast, relatively
soft and somewhat jerky, also consistent with previous research (Aronoff et
al., 1992; Boone, 1996; de Meijer, 1989; Montepare et al., 1987; Wallbott
& Scherer, 1986). Finally, movements in neutral displays were rated as
having very little action with very contracted movements, in addition to
being loose, slow, soft, and smooth.
In addition to identifying body cues that characterized different emo-
tions, the present study also observed differences in the ease of recognizing
certain body-based emotions. In particular, the present study found that
angry displays were decoded with a greater degree of accuracy than happy
or sad displays. Other researchers have found a similar superiority in
the perception of anger. For example, Montepare et al. (1987) found that
young adult perceivers were more adept at identifying whether a person
was experiencing anger as opposed to happiness on the basis of cues pro-
vided by variations in the person's gait. Similarly, Hansen and Hansen
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JOANN MONTEPARE, ELISSA KOFF, DEBORAH ZAITCHIK, MARILYN ALBERT

(1988) found that adult perceivers were quicker to identify angry faces, as
opposed to happy faces, in crowds of faces. Relatedly, researchers have
suggested that angry faces are particularly attention-evoking for young in-
fants (Schwartz, Izard, & Ansul, 1985). It has been argued that anger may
be detected more easily than other emotional displays because of the so-
cially and biologically adaptive information its detection provides (Hansen
& Hansen, 1988; Montepare et al., 1987). For example, the expression of a
person's anger may signal danger or threat and its accurate detection has
obvious survival value. Failure to identify happiness or sadness with great
accuracy may not carry with it the negative consequences of failure to
detect anger. The present age-comparative data support the viability of this
argument, suggesting that the sensitivity to particular emotional messages
develops early in life and is maintained throughout the life course.
The results of the present study provide a basis for future studies of the
perception of emotion in aging adults using body cues in addition to more
commonly studied facial and vocal cues. In this regard, a number of addi-
tional theoretical questions regarding the perception of emotion remain to
be addressed. For example, researchers have argued that there are at least
two distinct categories of emotion: basic and complex or nonbasic emo-
tions (e.g., Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, & O'Connor, 1987). Previous research
has focused primarily on the perception of basic emotions (e.g., happiness,
anger, sadness). It would be interesting to know if there are age-related
differences in the perception of complex emotions (e.g., shame, embarrass-
ment) and if these emotions are consistently associated with specific body
cues. It would also be interesting to know if there are age-related differ-
ences in the perception of different categories of emotion when emotion-
related facial, vocal, and body cues are available simultaneously to de-
coders. In addition, it would be worthwhile to consider the limitations
posed by the cross-sectional nature of the present data and how longitudi-
nal strategies might provide further insights about emotion perception and
aging. Finally, at the onset it was noted that the present study intentionally
made use of posed emotional displays. As such, one needs to be mindful
about the generalizations that can be made regarding age differences with
respect to more naturally-occurring emotional expressions. As mentioned
above, examining perceptions of posed expressions has several meth-
odological and theoretical merits. Nevertheless, researchers interested in
exploring the implications of body movements and gestures for emotion
perception would clearly benefit from a closer examination of the validity
and reliability of procedures used to sample potential body cues.5
Important practical questions can also now be addressed. For exam-
ple, it is of interest to explore the extent to which older and younger adults
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are able to effectively express emotions through the use of body move-
ments and gestures. Likewise, it is unclear whether age-related diseases,
such as Alzheimer's disease, alter the ability to identify emotions from
body cues. Difficulties in this area might lead to miscommunication of
intention and exacerbate behavioral problems, which might be reduced by
appropriate intervention.

Notes

1. Two actors appeared in all scenes except one happy scene. Only one actor was used in
this scene simply because the scenario used to capture happiness could easily be por-
trayed with one main character. Clips of this scene are described in the text.
2. Because individual sets of video clips were drawn from particular behavioral scenes, one
may question the independence of ratings within each set of clips. However, given the
quantity, briefness, and randomization of the clips, we believe that carry-over effects of
rating from one clip to another are unlikely.
3. Preliminary analyses failed to show any gender effects. Therefore, gender was omitted as a
factor from subsequent analyses to increase the sample size and statistical power.
4. Several significant effects for age were also observed suggesting that younger and older
adults' used that the rating scales in somewhat different ways. However, inspection of the
means failed to show any systematic biases in older and younger adults' ratings. Thus, the
differences that were observed likely reflect idiosyncratic differences. The significant main
effects for age that were found for four of the six movement characteristics were as
follows: fast, F(1, 14) = 10.35, p < .006; loose, F(1, 14) = 12.84, p < .003; hard, F(1,
14) = 13.57, p< .003; contracted, F(1, 14) = 7.6, p< .015. Ratings of looseness were
the only ones for which there was a significant interaction between age group and emotion
type. Specifically, older adults rated the movements in angry clips as looser than did the
younger adults, F(3, 42) = 5.17, p < .004.
5. The analysis of emotion-relevant cues fashioned after the work of Wallbot and Scherer
(1986) provides a useful strategy for examining several pertinent issues, such as the extent
to which cues are used in stereotyped or exaggerated fashion in posed displays. Readers
are encouraged to review their work for additional applications

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