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Composite facial expressions were prepared by aligning the top half of one expression (eg, anger) with the bottom half of another (eg, happiness). Experiment 1 shows that participants are slower to identify the expression in either half of these composite images relative to a" noncomposite" control condition in which the 2 halves are misaligned. This parallels the composite effect for facial identity (AW Young, D. Hellawell, & DC Hay, 1987), and like its identity counterpart, the effect is disrupted by inverting the stimuli (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 shows that no composite effect is found when the top and bottom sections contain different models' faces posing the same expression; this serves to exclude many nonconfigural interpretations of the composite effect (eg, that composites are more" attention-grabbing" than noncomposites). Finally, Experiment 4 demonstrates that the composite effects for identity and expression …