Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2022 May;75(5):936-953. doi: 10.1177/17470218211047935. Epub 2021 Oct 4.
Actors make modifications to their face, voice, and body to match standard gestural conceptions of the fictional characters they are portraying during stage performances. However, the gestural manifestations of acting have not been quantified experimentally, least of all in group-level analyses. To quantify the facial correlates of character portrayal in professional actors for the first time, we had 24 actors portray a contrastive series of nine stock characters (e.g., king, bully, lover) that were organised according to a predictive scheme based on the two statistically independent personality dimensions of assertiveness (i.e., the tendency to satisfy personal concerns) and cooperativeness (i.e., the tendency to satisfy others' concerns). We used three-dimensional motion capture to examine changes in facial dimensions, with an emphasis on the relative expansion/contraction of four facial segments related to the brow, eyebrows, lips, and jaw, respectively. The results demonstrated that expansions in both upper- and lower-facial segments were related to increases in the levels of character cooperativeness, but not assertiveness. These findings demonstrate that actors reliably manipulate their facial features in a contrastive manner to differentiate characters based on their underlying personality traits.
演员通过对面部、声音和身体的调整，来贴合他们在舞台表演中所扮演的虚构角色的标准手势概念。然而，表演中的手势表现尚未通过实验进行量化，尤其是在群体层面的分析中。为了首次对专业演员在刻画角色时的面部变化进行量化，我们让 24 名演员对比性地扮演九种类型的角色（例如国王、恶霸、爱人），这些角色是根据基于两个独立人格维度（即满足个人关注的倾向和满足他人关注的倾向）的预测方案组织的。我们使用三维运动捕捉技术来检查面部尺寸的变化，重点是与眉毛、嘴唇和下巴分别相关的四个面部区域的相对扩张/收缩。结果表明，上下面部区域的扩张与角色合作程度的增加有关，但与自信程度无关。这些发现表明，演员确实以对比的方式操纵自己的面部特征，根据角色的潜在个性特征来区分角色。
