It is both a pleasure and a challenge to write an epilogue for this volume. The editors have laid out the major issues and have placed them in historical and conceptual context; and the reading of each chapter draft by other contributors has minimized errors of interpretation, clarified commonalities, and sharpened differences. In this epilogue, I review the chapters, extract certain themes from them, and propose an integration in which the construct “emotion” is narrowed, the expressions of the face are freed from the claim of tight linkage to that construct, and the situated line of activity in which facial displays occur is emphasized. I believe this will facilitate our understanding of facial displays and indicate some change in our research efforts.

The chapters: Contrasts and similarities

Russell and Ferndndez-Dols

The importance of facial expressions in human affairs is aptly stressed by Russell and Fernández-Dols in their introduction. Throughout recorded history, faces have been depicted as indicators of internal states. This tradition has been maintained through the present day and is reflected in the interpretation of much of our current research. But there are problems with this conception – people do not always reveal what is presumed to be their internal states, and people who display a certain expression are not necessarily in the state conventionally implied by the expression. Moreover, the concept of emotion is ambiguous, making it difficult to ascertain what if any linkage there is between facial movements and emotional states.