Facial and verbal congruency: effects on perceived verbal and emotional coaching feedback.

The present study investigated the effects of facial-verbal expression congruencies on the perception of a coach's verbal and emotional feedback. The design was a two (facial congruency) by two (verbal feedback) completely randomized factorial. The facial expression was either congruent or incongruent with verbal feedback. Seventy-one university students (39 males, 32 females) were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions. Each student watched a videotape of facial-verbal pairings and evaluated (a) the percentage of positive and negative statements, (b) the emotions expressed by the coach. The analysis indicated that incongruent facial expressions distorted, in a negative direction, the expected frequency of positive feedback. The emotional state findings illustrated that the presence of any negative stimuli (face or verbal) produced the perception of negative affect. The findings provided converging evidence that inconsistencies in facial-verbal expression have a powerful effect on the perception of verbal feedback and emotional state.