Perception of emotion from moving body cues in photographs

To investigate whether the dynamic moving condition in a videotape would transfer to a photograph, we showed subjects still photographs of emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise) depicted as points of light in dynamic light displays. Overall recognition was 70.4% with the dynamic light displays, but it dropped to 25.5% with the blurred tracks in the photographs, significantly above a chance level of 16.7%, but not large. Happiness, anger, and sadness were the most accurately recognized. The transfer effect of abstract movement to a still photograph may not be high, but the most active emotions (happiness, anger) and the most inactive one (sadness) do transfer. Our results may have some implications for the artistic rendition of movement in pictures.