How important is the face?

I just saw this interesting article on NPR about human facial expressions and how they can be misleading if taken out of context of the body pose:

http://www.npr.org/2012/11/30/166184008/victory-or-defeat-emotions-arent-all-in-the-face

Check out this picture from the article:

Can you tell who is happy and who is upset?

As an animator I spend a lot of time tweaking a character's facial rig controls into something resembling the emotion I want to portray, but I wonder, just how important is it, compared to getting the body motion working?  It may seem a little backwards, since I've been told that people look at the eyes and face of a person more than everything else.  There have even been studies done that track where an audience is looking during any particular shot of a movie:


Lots of focus on the face, though obviously in this scene there isn't a whole lot of action going on.  I'd be curious to find another example with a lot of full body motion happening.

Still, I suppose the main point is, getting a strong pose may be MORE important than getting the facial expression working.  The audience may not be directly focusing on the curve of the spine or the position of the legs and arms, but they "feel" the pose subconsciously and know when something is off, even if they can't quite put their finger on it.

Of course, that's not to say that the face is not important at all.  It all works together.  But just think of some examples of characters where the face is very simplified or missing all together, and you can still make out their emotions: WALL-E, Luxo Jr., Aladdin's magic carpet, Jack Skellington (no pupils), Gromit (no mouth).