A Study on the Suppression of Amusement

In this work, we aim to gain better insights into the underlying behaviors of people when they attempt to suppress amusement, the positive emotion experienced, specifically from finding something funny. We aim to better understand the different physiological manifestations that occur when this suppression happens. We investigate this phenomenon by observing the presence/absence of action units (AUs) during amusement expression and suppression. We also record galvanic skin responses (GSR) to more closely observe if there are major differences in physiological manifestations during amusement expression versus suppression. This study was performed as a part of a larger one on deceit detection since amusement suppression can also be viewed as a form deceit, based on the context. We showed that the overall facial expression signatures were unsurprisingly very different for amusement expression and suppression; the features associated with positive emotions were clearly dominant during free expression and sadness was especially dominant during suppression. In observing the GSR readings, free expression and suppression manifested quite differently across individuals but similarly within the same individual, suggesting that the internal state or emotional arousal level of the participants were not altered significantly when trying to suppress amusement. Finally, in more than 75\% of the cases, we found that arousal induced by amusement could not readily be eliminated, even when the individuals succeeded in masking it on their faces. This further validates the claim in the social psychology literature that suppression decreases expressive behavior, but does not decrease the emotional experience (measured via GSR).