Facial expression of emotion (or "facial affect") is rapidly becoming an area of intense interest in the computer science and interaction design communities. Ironically, this interest comes at a time when the classic findings on perception of human facial affect are being challenged in the psychological research literature, largely on methodological grounds. This talk will present some new data on the recognition of human facial expressions, using experimental methods and analyses designed to systematically address the criticisms and help resolve this controversy.

Further research applying this data is then described, most notably a user study on perception of affect in a prototype robot face. We see this work as a demonstration of how basic and more applied research can prove mutually informative in this emerging field.