Process Essay: The Facial Feedback Effect

In this document I will be discussing facial feedback effect and how I have recently observed its affect on me. The book defines this as “the tendency of facial expressions to trigger corresponding feelings such as fear, anger, or happiness”. For example, when you are walking down the street and someone passing by says “good morning” with a huge smile on their face you feel as though you cannot help but smile back and say “good morning” in a voice that does not fit your not so happy mood. This stimulus, a smile and a happy “good morning”, can affect your feelings, emotions and sometimes it can even change your attitude completely. This effect can also occur when you are already in a good mood. You could be in a great mood and walk into a room where your friend is crying because their dog passed away and it can immediately change your mood from happy to empathetic and sad for your friend. This strong expression of emotion can sometimes bring you to tears when you see someone sad or even put you in a bad mood when someone around you is mad or agitated. You can also change your mood through your own facial expressions. If you’re in a bad mood try smiling. According to the facial feedback effect you could actually turn your bad mood into a better one when you put a little pep in your step.

I work with eight children between the ages of three and five that have PTSD due to early trauma. This means that the children have a hard time with regulating themselves and expressing verbally what their emotions are. This struggle can lead to aggressive behaviors such as kicking, biting, scratching, smacking, and punching. Last week I was working with a child that is known to show aggressive behavior and his arousal escalated into him smacking my face really hard. I was pretty shocked by this and it set me into tears. I left work that day feeling extremely discouraged and in an all around bad