Angry, disgusted, or afraid? Studies on the malleability of emotion perception

ABSTRACT— Current theories of emotion perception posit that basic facial expressions signal categorically discrete emotions or affective dimensions of valence and arousal. In both cases, the information is thought to be directly "read out" from the face in a way that is largely immune to context. In contrast, the three studies reported here demonstrated that identical facial configurations convey strikingly different emotions and dimensional values depending on the affective context in which they are embedded. This effect is modulated by the similarity between the target facial expression and the facial expression typically associated with the context. Moreover, by monitoring eye movements, we demonstrated that characteristic fixation patterns previously thought to be determined solely by the facial expression are systematically modulated by emotional context already at very early stages of visual processing, even by the first time the face is fixated. Our results indicate that the perception of basic facial expressions is not context invariant and can be categorically altered by context at early perceptual levels.     

Dimensional emotions are represented by distinct topographical brain networks

The ability to recognize others’ facial emotions has become increasingly important after the COVID-19 pandemic, which causes stressful situations in emotion regulation. Considering the importance of emotion in maintaining a social life, emotion knowledge to perceive and label emotions of oneself and others requires an understanding of affective dimensions, such as emotional valence and emotional arousal. However, limited information is available about whether the behavioral representation of affective dimensions is similar to their neural representation. To explore the relationship between the brain and behavior in the representational geometries of affective dimensions, we constructed a behavioral paradigm in which emotional faces were categorized into geometric spaces along the valence, arousal, and valence and arousal dimensions. Moreover, we compared such representations to neural representations of the faces acquired by functional magnetic resonance imaging. We found that affective dimensions were similarly represented in the behavior and brain. Specifically, behavioral and neural representations of valence were less similar to those of arousal. We also found that valence was represented in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, frontal eye fields, precuneus, and early visual cortex, whereas arousal was represented in the cingulate gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, orbitofrontal cortex, fusiform gyrus, and early visual cortex. In conclusion, the current study suggests that dimensional emotions are similarly represented in the behavior and brain and are presented with differential topographical organizations in the brain.     

The dynamic relationships of affective synchrony to perceptions of situations

Most theories of affect predict that affects of opposite valence should be negatively correlated (de-synchronous) or independent (asynchronous) within individuals. Such theories were challenged by the finding that the association between energetic arousal and tense arousal ranged from de-synchrony to synchrony (Rafaeli, Rogers, &; Revelle, 2007). In this paper, we report two experience-sampling studies employing cell-phone text-messaging aimed at further exploring individual differences in affective experience. Results showed that within-person relationships between energetic arousal and tense arousal ranged from de-synchrony to synchrony, but that within-person relationships between Pleasant and Unpleasant affect varied from strong de-synchrony to weak de-synchrony. Individual differences in within-person EA-TA associations were related to perceiving threatening situations as incentives and to interactions between affective traits.     

Effects of specific emotions on subjective judgment,driving performance,and perceived workload

The aim of this paper was to explore effects of specific emotions on subjective judgment, driving performance, and perceived workload. The traditional driving behavior research has focused on cognitive aspects such as attention, judgment, and decision making. Psychological findings have indicated that affective states also play a critical role in a user’s rational, functional, and intelligent behaviors. Most applied emotion research has concentrated on simple valence and arousal dimensions. However, recent findings have indicated that different emotions may have different impacts, even though they belong to the same valence or arousal. To identify more specific affective effects, seventy undergraduate participants drove in a vehicle simulator under three different road conditions, with one of the following induced affective states: anger, fear, happiness, or neutral. We measured their subjective judgment of driving confidence, risk perception, and safety level after affect induction; four types of driving errors: Lane Keeping, Traffic Rules, Aggressive Driving, and Collision while driving; and the electronic NASA-TLX after driving. Induced anger clearly showed negative effects on subjective safety level and led to degraded driving performance compared to neutral and fear. Happiness also showed degraded driving performance compared to neutral and fear. Fear did not have any significant effect on subjective judgment, driving performance, or perceived workload. Results suggest that we may need to take emotions and affect into account to construct a naturalistic and generic driving behavior model. To this end, a specific-affect approach is needed, beyond the sheer valence and arousal dimensions. Given that workload results are similar across affective states, examining affective effects may also require a different approach than just the perceived workload framework. The present work is expected to guide emotion detection research and help develop an emotion regulation model and adaptive interfaces for drivers.     

Emotion and reason in everyday risk perception

Although research has documented the importance of emotion in risk perception, little is known about it in the context of everyday life. Using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), 94 part‐time students were prompted at random—via cellular telephones—to report on mood state and three emotions and to assess risk on thirty occasions during their working hours. The emotions—valence, arousal, and dominance—were measured using self‐assessment manikins (SAMs) (Bradley & Lang, 1994). Hierarchical linear models (HLM) revealed that mood state and emotions explained significant variance in risk perception. In addition, valence and arousal accounted for variance over and above “reason” (measured by severity and possibility of risks). Six risks were re‐assessed in a post‐experimental session and found to be lower than their real‐time counterparts. The study demonstrates the feasibility and value of collecting representative samples of data with simple technology. Evidence is also provided to demonstrate the statistical consistency of the HLM estimates. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Individual differences in perceptual sensitivity and response bias in anxiety: Evidence from emotional faces

We investigated the perception of emotional stimuli in anxious individuals and non-anxious cohorts. Signal detection theory analysis was applied to the discrimination of emotionally charged faces at several points along a continuum of emotional intensity. This design permitted the derivation of multiple measures of sensitivity and response bias for fearful and for happy faces. Anxious individuals lacked a conservative bias in judging fearful stimuli and a liberal bias in judging positive stimuli compared with non-anxious individuals. In addition, anxious participants had lower perceptual sensitivity (d′) than non-anxious participants for mildly threatening stimuli, as well as a trend towards lower perceptual sensitivity for moderately positive stimuli. These results suggest that the processing of threat information in anxiety is affected by sensitivity and bias differently at different levels of affective intensity.     

情绪的确定性评价对信息加工的影响

检验了情绪的效价和确定性评价对个体的信息加工策略选择的影响及其心理机制。结果表明,情绪效价对个体的信息加工方式的影响会受到情绪确定性评价的调节。高确定评价的情绪中,积极情绪的被试更倾向于采用启发式加工,消极情绪的被试更倾向于采用系统式加工。积极情绪中,高确定评价情绪的被试更倾向于采用启发式加工,低确定评价情绪的被试更倾向于采用系统式加工。当个体对自己产生情绪的原因进行合理归因后,情绪效价和确定性评价对个体信息加工方式的影响效应都消失了,说明情绪的效价和确定性评价均以信息的方式对对个体信息加工策略的选择产生影响。     

Parental perception and interpretation of infant emotions: psychological and physiological processes

To study parental experience and perception of infant emotional expressions parents' responses to infant pictures depicting positive, neutral and negative emotions were assessed on the level of affective judgments (perceived and experienced valence and arousal), of mimic responses (facial muscle activity) and of the eyelid reflex (using the startle paradigm). In general, while parents were able to appropriately perceive infant emotions and were clearly affected by them, they exhibited a bias for positive interpretation. This was obvious from their subjective evaluations which, e.g. were more positive for experienced than for perceived valence, as well as from their mimic responses indicating positive responses in general. In addition, infant pictures including the negative ones lead to an inhibition of the startle reflex, indicating a positive evaluation of infant emotions on the sub‐cortical level. These effects were most prominent when parents were faced with pictures of their own infants as compared to unfamiliar ones. The way parents process information about infant emotions may facilitate appropriate responsiveness to infants' needs. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reproducing affective norms with lexical co-occurrence statistics: Predicting valence,arousal, and dominance

Human ratings of valence, arousal, and dominance are frequently used to study the cognitive mechanisms of emotional attention, word recognition, and numerous other phenomena in which emotions are hypothesized to play an important role. Collecting such norms from human raters is expensive and time consuming. As a result, affective norms are available for only a small number of English words, are not available for proper nouns in English, and are sparse in other languages. This paper investigated whether affective ratings can be predicted from length, contextual diversity, co-occurrences with words of known valence, and orthographic similarity to words of known valence, providing an algorithm for estimating affective ratings for larger and different datasets. Our bootstrapped ratings achieved correlations with human ratings on valence, arousal, and dominance that are on par with previously reported correlations across gender, age, education and language boundaries. We release these bootstrapped norms for 23,495 English words.     

When Arousal Influences Ad Evaluation and Valence Does Not (and Vice Versa)

This research examines, across 2 studies, the interplay between the valence and arousal components of affective states and the affective tone of a target ad. In the first study, music was used to induce a pleasant or unpleasant mood, while controlling for arousal. Participants were subsequently exposed to an ad that either had a positive‐affective tone or was ambiguous in its affective tone. As predicted, the valence of the affective state colored the evaluation of the ad in a mood‐congruent direction, but this coloring effect occurred only when the ad had an ambiguous‐affective tone. In the second study, the target ad had a clear positive or negative affective tone, and the valence and arousal dimensions of the mood state were manipulated independently. As predicted, the arousal dimension, but not the valence dimension, influenced ad evaluation. Ad evaluations were more polarized in the direction of the ad's affective tone under high arousal than under low arousal. This effect was more pronounced for self‐referent evaluations (e.g., “I like the ad”) than for object‐referent evaluations (e.g., “The ad is good”), favoring an attributional explanation—the excitation transfer hypothesis—over an attention‐narrowing explanation—the dynamic complexity hypothesis. Taken together, the results of the 2 studies stress the important contingency of the affective tone of the ad, when examining the effects of the valence and arousal dimensions of a person's affective state on ad evaluation. The results also provide additional insights into how and when affect serves as information in judgment processes.     

Modelling audiovisual integration of affect from videos and music

Two experiments examined how affective values from visual and auditory modalities are integrated. Experiment 1 paired music and videos drawn from three levels of valence while holding arousal constant. Experiment 2 included a parallel combination of three levels of arousal while holding valence constant. In each experiment, participants rated their affective states after unimodal and multimodal presentations. Experiment 1 revealed a congruency effect in which stimulus combinations of the same extreme valence resulted in more extreme state ratings than component stimuli presented in isolation. An interaction between music and video valence reflected the greater influence of negative affect. Video valence was found to have a significantly greater effect on combined ratings than music valence. The pattern of data was explained by a five parameter differential weight averaging model that attributed greater weight to the visual modality and increased weight with decreasing values of valence. Experiment 2 revealed a congruency effect only for high arousal combinations and no interaction effects. This pattern was explained by a three parameter constant weight averaging model with greater weight for the auditory modality and a very low arousal value for the initial state. These results demonstrate key differences in audiovisual integration between valence and arousal.     

Perceptual and affective mechanisms in facial expression recognition: An integrative review

Facial expressions of emotion involve a physical component of morphological changes in a face and an affective component conveying information about the expresser’s internal feelings. It remains unresolved how much recognition and discrimination of expressions rely on the perception of morphological patterns or the processing of affective content. This review of research on the role of visual and emotional factors in expression recognition reached three major conclusions. First, behavioral, neurophysiological, and computational measures indicate that basic expressions are reliably recognized and discriminated from one another, albeit the effect may be inflated by the use of prototypical expression stimuli and forced-choice responses. Second, affective content along the dimensions of valence and arousal is extracted early from facial expressions, although this coarse affective representation contributes minimally to categorical recognition of specific expressions. Third, the physical configuration and visual saliency of facial features contribute significantly to expression recognition, with “emotionless” computational models being able to reproduce some of the basic phenomena demonstrated in human observers. We conclude that facial expression recognition, as it has been investigated in conventional laboratory tasks, depends to a greater extent on perceptual than affective information and mechanisms.     

Hemispheric asymmetry in the processing of negative and positive words: a divided field study

Research on the lateralisation of brain functions for emotion has yielded different results as a function of whether it is the experience, expression, or perceptual processing of emotion that is examined. Further, for the perception of emotion there appear to be differences between the processing of verbal and nonverbal stimuli. The present research examined the hemispheric asymmetry in the processing of verbal stimuli varying in emotional valence. Participants performed a lexical decision task for words varying in affective valence (but equated in terms of arousal) that were presented briefly to the right or left visual field. Participants were significantly faster at recognising positive words presented to the right visual field/left hemisphere. This pattern did not occur for negative words (and was reversed for high arousal negative words). These results suggest that the processing of verbal stimuli varying in emotional valence tends to parallel hemispheric asymmetry in the experience of emotion.     

Hemispheric asymmetry in the processing of negative and positive words: A divided field study

Research on the lateralisation of brain functions for emotion has yielded different results as a function of whether it is the experience, expression, or perceptual processing of emotion that is examined. Further, for the perception of emotion there appear to be differences between the processing of verbal and nonverbal stimuli. The present research examined the hemispheric asymmetry in the processing of verbal stimuli varying in emotional valence. Participants performed a lexical decision task for words varying in affective valence (but equated in terms of arousal) that were presented briefly to the right or left visual field. Participants were significantly faster at recognising positive words presented to the right visual field/left hemisphere. This pattern did not occur for negative words (and was reversed for high arousal negative words). These results suggest that the processing of verbal stimuli varying in emotional valence tends to parallel hemispheric asymmetry in the experience of emotion.     

A little bit louder now: negative affect increases perceived loudness

Traditionally, perception was considered to be an encapsulated process that was unaffected by top-down processes like affect. Recent work in vision draws this framework into question by showing that changes in the affective state of the perceiver can impact many different aspects of visual perception. Here, we extend the relationship between affect and perception into another perceptual modality: audition. Participants were induced into a negative or neutral mood by writing about a frightening or neutral experience in their past. They then listened to a series of short, neutral tones (320 and 640 ms) and rated the loudness and duration of the tones. Participants in a negative mood rated the tones as significantly louder, but not longer, than participants in a neutral mood, suggesting that the difference between the groups was perceptual rather than just a response bias. This research shows for the first time that the role of affect in perceptual processes may be more pervasive than previously considered.     

The influence of affective factors on time perception

Several studies have suggested that both affective valence and arousal affect the perception of time. However, in previous experiments, the two affective dimensions have not been systematically controlled. In this study, standardized photographic slides rated for emotional valence and arousal were projected to two groups of subjects for 2, 4, and 6 sec. One group of subjects estimated the projection duration on an analog scale, whereas the second group of subjects reproduced the intervals by pushing a button. Heart rate and skin conductance responses were also recorded during stimulus presentation as indices of attention and arousal. Time estimation results showed neither a main effect of valence nor a main effect of arousal. A highly significant valence × arousal interaction affected duration judgments. For low-arousal stimuli, the duration of negative slides was judged relatively shorter than the duration of positive slides. For high-arousal stimuli, the duration of negative slides was judged longer than the duration of positive slides. The same interaction pattern was observed across judgment modalities. These results are interpreted in terms of a model of action tendency, in which the level of arousal controls two different motivational mechanisms, one emotional and the other attentional.     

Age similarities in matching pro- and contra-hedonic emotional strategies to everyday scenarios

ABSTRACT

Older adults are motivated to maximize positive affect in the present. Young adults will purposely feel negative and high arousal emotions in order to achieve a goal. However, this type of contra-hedonic emotional alignment has not been extensively studied with older adults. We expected older adults are less likely than young adults to select high arousal and negative emotions within specific scenarios where those states could be useful. In two studies, participants selected the emotion they preferred in hypothetical problems that varied on the arousal and valence best suited for goal achievement. Young and older adults were equally likely to endorse affective strategies that matched both pro and contra-hedonic scenarios. While older adults may be generally motivated to avoid negative and high-arousing emotions, they are just as likely as young adults to indicate that these states could be helpful in certain situations.     

Perceptual dimensions differentiate emotions

Individuals often describe objects in their world in terms of perceptual dimensions that span a variety of modalities; the visual (e.g., brightness: dark–bright), the auditory (e.g., loudness: quiet–loud), the gustatory (e.g., taste: sour–sweet), the tactile (e.g., hardness: soft vs. hard) and the kinaesthetic (e.g., speed: slow–fast). We ask whether individuals use perceptual dimensions to differentiate emotions from one another. Participants in two studies (one where respondents reported on abstract emotion concepts and a second where they reported on specific emotion episodes) rated the extent to which features anchoring 29 perceptual dimensions (e.g., temperature, texture and taste) are associated with 8 emotions (anger, fear, sadness, guilt, contentment, gratitude, pride and excitement). Results revealed that in both studies perceptual dimensions differentiate positive from negative emotions and high arousal from low arousal emotions. They also differentiate among emotions that are similar in arousal and valence (e.g., high arousal negative emotions such as anger and fear). Specific features that anchor particular perceptual dimensions (e.g., hot vs. cold) are also differentially associated with emotions.     

Perceiving arousal and valence in facial expressions: Differences between children and adults

Arousal and valence have long been studied as the two primary dimensions for the perception of emotional stimuli such as facial expressions. Prior correlational studies that tested emotion perception along these dimensions found broad similarities between adults and children. However, few studies looked for direct differences between children and adults in these dimensions beyond correlation. We tested 9-year-old children and adults on rating positive and negative facial stimuli based on emotional arousal and valence. Despite high significant correlations between children’s and adults’ ratings, our findings also showed significant differences between children and adults in terms of rating values: Children rated all expressions as significantly more positive than adults in valence. Children also rated positive emotions as more arousing than adults. Our results show that although perception of facial emotions along arousal and valence follows similar patterns in children and adults, some differences in ratings persist, and vary by emotion type.