The emergence of deep learning has yielded substantial advancements in computer vision, hence offering novel opportunities for the interdisciplinary exploration of finance and computer science. This paper adopts a cognitive dissonance theory viewpoint to investigate the impact of managers face emotion on market performance and risk in Chinese listed companies from 2016 to 2022. We employ deep learning model to analyze managers’ facial emotion. We find that the more positive facial expressions of managers in earnings conference call predict better market performance, lower volatility and share price crash risk. This study deepens the application of cognitive dissonance theory.