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Experimental Psychology (Russia)
2025. Vol. 18, no. 4, 64–79
doi:10.17759/exppsy.2025180404
ISSN: 2072-7593 / 2311-7036 (online)

Perception of emotional state of a person based on the transformed video recordings of the body

 
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Abstract

Context and relevance. The perception of emotional states from human body expressions involves the use of both shape and motion kinematics information. Despite a significant number of studies, it remains unclear what minimum amount of motion and shape information is sufficient for emotion recognition, as well as how motion and shape are related in the perception of different emotion categories. Objective: to determine the extent to which excluding shape and motion information will hinder the recognition of emotional body expressions. Hypothesis. Compared to full-color video clips, the accuracy of emotion recognition from dynamic dot patterns will decrease; further reduction in the number of frames will lead to an even greater decrease in accuracy. Methods and materials. The study involved 233 participants (209 women and 24 men, aged 22 to 64 years, median 37 years). The stimuli consisted of dynamic black dots on a white background perceived as human body movements expressing emotions of happiness, fear, disgust, excitement, disappointment, boredom, and neutral state. The stimuli were shown to different groups of participants with either smooth (23 frames/s) or stroboscopic (2 frames/s) motion. Participants determined the emotional state of the posers. The obtained data were compared with the results of a previous study using full-color video fragments. Results. Stroboscopic exposure reduces the recognition accuracy of all expressions except happiness and neutral state and also changes the structure of categorical fields of emotion perception. The main contribution to the perception of happiness is made by the shape and texture of the human image, as well as the context of the situation. For expressions of disgust and disappointment, the role of dynamic information increases. The assessment of fear expression depends on both static and dynamic features and is primarily based on body, not facial expressions. The perception of boredom and excitement is primarily associated with kinematic patterns. For recognizing a neutral state, it’s not static or dynamic features that play a key role, but rather information about facial microexpressions. Conclusions. We identified differentiated patterns of the contribution of shape and movement information to the perception of emotional body expressions that depend on the emotion category.

General Information

Keywords: emotion perception, biological motion, body expression, emotional states, non-verbal behavior

Journal rubric: Face Science

Article type: scientific article

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17759/exppsy.2025180404

Funding. The research was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (project No. 24-18-00904 “Mechanisms of person’s emotional state perception in the processes of nonverbal communication” https://rscf.ru/project/24-18-00904/).

Acknowledgements. The author is grateful to E.G. Hoze for assistance in data collection.

Received 10.11.2025

Revised 20.11.2025

Accepted

Published

For citation: Korolkova, O.A. (2025). Perception of emotional state of a person based on the transformed video recordings of the body. Experimental Psychology (Russia), 18(4), 64–79. (In Russ.). https://doi.org/10.17759/exppsy.2025180404

© Korolkova O.A., 2025

License: CC BY-NC 4.0

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Information About the Authors

Olga A. Korolkova, Candidate of Science (Psychology), Associate Professor, Leading Research Associate, Center of Experimental Psychology, Moscow State University of Psychology and Education, Moscow, Russian Federation, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4814-7266, e-mail: olga.kurakova@gmail.com

Conflict of interest

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Ethics statement

The study was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of Moscow State University of Psychology and Education (report no. 2, 2025/04/25).

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