The role of motion and intensity in deaf children’s recognition of real human facial expressions of emotion

There is substantial evidence to suggest that deafness is associated with delays in emotion understanding, which has been attributed to delays in language acquisition and opportunities to converse. However, studies addressing the ability to recognise facial expressions of emotion have produced equivocal findings. The two experiments presented here attempt to clarify emotion recognition in deaf children by considering two aspects: the role of motion and the role of intensity in deaf children’s emotion recognition. In Study 1, 26 deaf children were compared to 26 age-matched hearing controls on a computerised facial emotion recognition task involving static and dynamic expressions of 6 emotions. Eighteen of the deaf and 18 age-matched hearing controls additionally took part in Study 2, involving the presentation of the same 6 emotions at varying intensities. Study 1 showed that deaf children’s emotion recognition was better in the dynamic rather than static condition, whereas the hearing children showed no difference in performance between the two conditions. In Study 2, the deaf children performed no differently from the hearing controls, showing improved recognition rates with increasing rates of intensity. With the exception of disgust, no differences in individual emotions were found. These findings highlight the importance of using ecologically valid stimuli to assess emotion recognition.     

The role of egocentrism and focalism in the emotion intensity bias

People sometimes judge their emotions, preferences, and attitudes to be more intense than those of other people. Two experiments tested whether this emotion intensity bias in direct comparisons results from two non-motivated cognitive processes—egocentrism and focalism. In Study 1, the intensity bias was found even when comparing a friend’s preferences to peers. In Study 2, attention given to own versus other’s preferences, and the referent of the comparison (self or others) were manipulated. Results indicated that attention to others reduced the bias, presumably by reducing egocentrism. Consistent with focalism, the bias also emerged when a friend was the target of comparison, and the bias was eliminated when the self was the referent rather than the target of comparison. In the discussion, we evaluate these accounts in light of some alternative explanations for the intensity bias.     

Successful emotion regulation requires both conviction and skill: beliefs about the controllability of emotions,reappraisal, and regulation success

To succeed in self-regulation, people need to believe that it is possible to change behaviour and they also need to use effective means to enable such a change. We propose that this also applies to emotion regulation. In two studies, we found that people were most successful in emotion regulation, the more they believed emotions can be controlled and the more they used an effective emotion regulation strategy – namely, cognitive reappraisal. Cognitive reappraisal moderated the link between beliefs about the controllability of emotion and success in emotion regulation, when reappraisal was measured as a trait (Study 1) or manipulated (Study 2). Such moderation was found when examining the regulation of disgust elicited by emotion-inducing films (Study 1), and the regulation of anger elicited by real political events (Study 2). We discuss the implications of our findings for research and practice in emotion regulation.     

Interoceptive sensitivity predicts sensitivity to the emotions of others

Some theories of emotion emphasise a close relationship between interoception and subjective experiences of emotion. In this study, we used facial expressions to examine whether interoceptive sensibility modulated emotional experience in a social context. Interoceptive sensibility was measured using the heartbeat detection task. To estimate individual emotional sensitivity, we made morphed photos that ranged between a neutral and an emotional facial expression (i.e., anger, sadness, disgust and happy). Recognition rates of particular emotions from these photos were calculated and considered as emotional sensitivity thresholds. Our results indicate that participants with accurate interoceptive awareness are sensitive to the emotions of others, especially for expressions of sadness and happy. We also found that false responses to sad faces were closely related with an individual's degree of social anxiety. These results suggest that interoceptive awareness modulates the intensity of the subjective experience of emotion and affects individual traits related to emotion processing.     

The relation between rumination and temporal features of emotion intensity

Intensity profiles of emotional experience over time have been found to differ primarily in explosiveness (i.e. whether the profile has a steep vs. a gentle start) and accumulation (i.e. whether intensity increases over time vs. goes back to baseline). However, the determinants of these temporal features remain poorly understood. In two studies, we examined whether emotion regulation strategies are predictive of the degree of explosiveness and accumulation of negative emotional episodes. Participants were asked to draw profiles reflecting changes in the intensity of emotions elicited either by negative social feedback in the lab (Study 1) or by negative events in daily life (Study 2). In addition, trait (Study 1 & 2), and state (Study 2) usage of a set of emotion regulation strategies was assessed. Multilevel analyses revealed that trait rumination (especially the brooding component) was positively associated with emotion accumulation (Study 1 & 2). State rumination was also positively associated with emotion accumulation and, to a lesser extent, with emotion explosiveness (Study 2). These results provide support for emotion regulation theories, which hypothesise that rumination is a central mechanism underlying the maintenance of negative emotions.     

Disappointment expression evokes collective guilt and collective action in intergroup conflict: the moderating role of legitimacy perceptions

Research on intergroup emotions has largely focused on the experience of emotions and surprisingly little attention has been given to the expression of emotions. Drawing on the social-functional approach to emotions, we argue that in the context of intergroup conflicts, outgroup members’ expression of disappointment with one’s ingroup induces the complementary emotion of collective guilt and correspondingly a collective action protesting ingroup actions against the outgroup. In Study 1 conducted immediately after the 2014 Gaza war, Jewish-Israeli participants received information about outgroup’s (Palestinians) expression of emotions (disappointment, fear, or none). As predicted, outgroup’s expression of disappointment increased collective guilt and willingness to participate in collective action, but only among those who saw the intergroup situation as illegitimate. Moreover, collective guilt mediated the relationship between disappointment expression and collective action, moderated, again, by legitimacy perception. In Study 2, we replicated these results in the context of racial tension between Black and White Americans in the US. We discuss the theoretical and applied implications of the findings.     

Eliciting emotion ratings for a set of film clips: A preliminary archive for research in emotion

ABSTRACT

Film clips are commonly used to elicit subjectively experienced emotional states for many research purposes, but film clips currently available in databases are out of date, include a limited set of emotions, and/or pertain to only one conceptualization of emotion. This work reports validation data from two studies aimed to elicit basic and complex emotions (amusement, anger, anxiety, compassion, contentment, disgust, fear, happiness/joy, irritation, neutrality, pride, relief, sadness, surprise), equally distributed according to valence (positive, negative) and intensity (high, low). Participants rated film clips according to the degree of experienced emotion, and for valence and arousal. Our findings initiate an iterative archive of film clips shown here to discretely elicit 11 different emotions. Although further validation of these film clips is needed, ratings provided here should assist researchers in selecting potential film clips to meet the aims of their work.     

Repulsed by violence: disgust sensitivity buffers trait, behavioral, and daily aggression

Many models of aggression include negatively valenced emotions as common elicitors of aggressive behavior. Yet, the motivational direction of these emotions is not taken into account. The current work explored whether sensitivity to a negative emotion associated with behavioral avoidance-disgust-will predict lower levels of aggression. Five studies tested the hypothesis that disgust sensitivity predicts less aggression. In Study 1 (N = 92), disgust sensitivity predicted less trait physical and verbal aggression. In Study 2 (N = 268), participants high in disgust sensitivity were less likely to behave aggressively towards a stranger on a reaction-time task. In Study 3 (N = 51), disgust sensitivity was associated with less intimate partner violence inclinations. Study 4 (N = 247) replicated this effect longitudinally. In Study 5 (N = 166), each domain of disgust (i.e., moral, sexual, and pathogen disgust) had a buffering effect on daily aggression when daily experiences activated those specific domains. These results highlight the usefulness of considering the motivational direction of an emotion when examining its influence on aggression.     

The relation between social sharing and the duration of emotional experience

People often socially share their emotions to regulate them. Two-mode theory of social sharing states that cognitive sharing will contribute to emotional recovery, whereas socio-affective sharing will only temporarily alleviate emotional distress. Previous studies supporting this theory, measured emotional recovery in terms of residual emotional intensity. Until now, another important time-dynamic aspect of emotions, emotion duration, has been largely ignored. In two experience sampling studies we addressed this gap. In Study 1, participants reported on the duration of anger, fear, and sadness episodes; additionally time-varying information on the occurrence and mode of sharing was collected. This study revealed that sharing led to a shortening in emotion duration, in particular when it was socio-affective in nature. In Study 2 we investigated whether this result could be interpreted in terms of our measure of duration primarily reflecting emotional relief rather than recovery. In this study, the same method as in Study 1 was used; additionally, residual emotional intensity was measured three days after emotion onset. Study 2 largely replicated the findings from Study 1. Furthermore, duration appeared to be empirically distinct from residual intensity. Finally, no relation between sharing and residual intensity was found, even when considering the sharing mode.     

Emotions associated with different textures during touch

Haptics plays an important role in emotion perception. However, most studies of the affective aspects of haptics have investigated emotional valence rather than emotional categories. In the present study, we explored the associations of different textures with six basic emotions: fear, anger, happiness, disgust, sadness and surprise. Participants touched twenty-one different textures and evaluated them using six emotional scales. Additionally, we explored whether individual differences in participants’ levels of alexithymia are related to the intensity of emotions associated with touching the textures. Alexithymia is a trait related to difficulties in identifying, describing and communicating emotions to others. The findings show that people associated touching different textures with distinct emotions. Textures associated with each of the basic emotions were identified. The study also revealed that a higher alexithymia level corresponds to a higher intensity of associations between textures and the emotions of disgust, anger and sadness.     

On the role of attention and emotion in morality: attentional control modulates unrelated disgust in moral judgments

The emotion of disgust can influence people's moral judgments, even if this emotion objectively is unrelated to the moral judgment in question. The present work demonstrates that attentional control regulates this effect. In three studies, disgust was induced. In an unrelated part of the studies, participants then judged a moral transgression. Disgust resulted in more severe moral judgments when attentional control (either measured by means of individual predisposition or manipulated with experimental control) was weak as opposed to strong (Studies 1-3). Findings further showed that attentional control mediated the positive relation between the intensity of participants' disgust responses and the severity of their moral judgments (Study 2). Moreover, attentional control has its effects through the regulation of affective processing (Study 3). Taken together, the findings suggest that unrelated influences of disgust on moral judgments are contingent on the attention system.     

Enhanced recall of disgusting relative to frightening photographs is not due to organisation

Previous research has shown that disgusting photographs are better remembered than frightening photographs, even when the two image types have equivalent valence and arousal. However, this work did not control for potential differences in organisation between the disgusting and frightening stimuli that could account for enhanced memory for disgusting photographs. The current research therefore tested whether differences in recall between disgusting and frightening photographs persist when differences in organisation are eliminated. Using a set of disgusting and frightening photographs matched for interrelatedness, Study 1 found that participants recalled more disgusting photographs than frightening photographs. This effect was mediated by increased attention to the disgusting photographs. Study 2 used Latent Semantic Analysis to further interrogate the relatedness of the photographs, providing converging evidence that organisation does not account for enhanced recall of disgusting photographs. Taken together, these results suggest that dimensional models of emotion cannot fully account for emotion’s effects on episodic memory. Instead, disgust appears to enhance recall via a distinctive, attention-mediated mechanism.     

Effort Invested in Vain: The Impact of Effort on the Intensity of Disappointment and Regret

Two scenario studies investigated the impact of the investment of instrumental and noninstrumental effort on the intensity of disappointment and regret. The role of effort was investigated in the context of other determinants of disappointment and regret: the desirability of the outcome, its likelihood, and the perceived responsibility for (not) obtaining the outcome. Study 1 shows that after failure, disappointment is more intense after an investment of higher levels of instrumental effort, whereas regret is more intense an investment of less instrumental effort. Study 2 shows that both disappointment and regret are more intense after an investment of higher levels of noninstrumental effort. Further analyses suggest that the effect of instrumental effort on disappointment is due to a direct effect of the investment of effort. The effect of instrumental effort on disappointment was mediated by the perceived likelihood of attaining the outcome and also related to the perceived desirability of the outcome. The impact of instrumental effort on regret was found to be due to a direct effect of the investment of effort, and to the perceived responsibility for not attaining the outcome. The effect of the investment of noninstrumental effort on the intensity of both disappointment and regret was found to be due to a direct effect of effort. Desirability also affected disappointment (with increased desirability leading to higher levels of disappointment), whereas only regret was affected by perceived responsibility. Implications of these findings for the study of disappointment and regret are discussed.     

Similar patterns of age-related differences in emotion recognition from speech and music

Young and old adults’ ability to recognize emotions from vocal expressions and music performances was compared. The stimuli consisted of (a) acted speech (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness; each posed with both weak and strong emotion intensity), (b) synthesized speech (anger, fear, happiness, and sadness), and (c) short melodies played on the electric guitar (anger, fear, happiness, and sadness; each played with both weak and strong emotion intensity). The listeners’ recognition of discrete emotions and emotion intensity was assessed and the recognition rates were controlled for various response biases. Results showed emotion-specific age-related differences in recognition accuracy. Old adults consistently received significantly lower recognition rates for negative, but not for positive, emotions for both speech and music stimuli. Some age-related differences were also evident in the listeners’ ratings of emotion intensity. The results show the importance of considering individual emotions in studies on age-related differences in emotion recognition.     

Emotion regulation choice: the role of environmental affordances

Which emotion regulation strategy one uses in a given context can have profound affective, cognitive, and social consequences. It is therefore important to understand the determinants of emotion regulation choice. Many prior studies have examined person-specific, internal determinants of emotion regulation choice. Recently, it has become clear that external variables that are properties of the stimulus can also influence emotion regulation choice. In the present research, we consider whether reappraisal affordances, defined as the opportunities for re-interpretation of a stimulus that are inherent in that stimulus, can shape individuals’ emotion regulation choices. We show that reappraisal affordances have stability across people and across time (Study 1), and are confounded with emotional intensity for a standardised set of picture stimuli (Study 2). Since emotional intensity has been shown to drive emotion regulation choice, we construct a context in which emotional intensity is separable from reappraisal affordances (Study 3) and use this context to show that reappraisal affordances powerfully influence emotion regulation choice even when emotional intensity and discrete emotions are taken into account (Study 4).     

Consequences of specific processing of emotional information: Impact of general versus specific autobiographical memory priming on emotion elicitation

The relation between emotion intensity and the voluntary activation of personal memories was investigated in 2 experiments. Two hypotheses were compared: the specificity hypothesis, which states that emotion intensity is positively related to the specificity of personal memories, and the strategic inhibition hypothesis, which postulates that specifying past experiences requires the inhibition of emotion. Study 1 showed that priming a specific (vs. overgeneral) access mode to autobiographical memory results in less emotion during a subsequent mental imagery trial. Study 2 replicated Study 1 with a wider array of emotions and a different method of emotion induction (films). Overall, results support the strategic inhibition hypothesis. The notion of specificity is discussed as well as implications for cognitive theories of emotion and their clinical applications.     

Willingness to express emotion depends upon perceiving partner care

Two studies document that people are more willing to express emotions that reveal vulnerabilities to partners when they perceive those partners to be more communally responsive to them. In Study 1, participants rated the communal strength they thought various partners felt toward them and their own willingness to express happiness, sadness and anxiety to each partner. Individuals who generally perceive high communal strength from their partners were also generally most willing to express emotion to partners. Independently, participants were more willing to express emotion to particular partners whom they perceived felt more communal strength toward them. In Study 2, members of romantic couples independently reported their own felt communal strength toward one another, perceptions of their partners’ felt communal strength toward them, and willingness to express emotions (happiness, sadness, anxiety, disgust, anger, hurt and guilt) to each other. The communal strength partners reported feeling toward the participants predicted the participants’ willingness to express emotion to those partners. This link was mediated by participants’ perceptions of the partner’s communal strength toward them which, itself, was a joint function of accurate perceptions of the communal strength partners had reported feeling toward them and projections of their own felt communal strength for their partners onto those partners.     

情绪调节方式及其发展趋势

本研究探讨了四个年龄阶段12种具体情绪感受频率和四种情绪调节方式(评价忽视、表情抑制、评价重视、表情宣泄)使用频率及其发展趋势.334名初中、高中、大学本科、成年被试填写了本研究的具体情绪量表(DES-IV)和情绪调节方式问卷.结果表明(1)四个年龄阶段在12种具体情绪感受频率的顺序上基本一致,快乐和兴趣较多,内疚和羞愧较多.(2)正情绪调节以重视和宣泄为主,负情绪以忽视和抑制为主.原因调节多于反应调节.(3)成年之后,惊奇、羞愧、厌恶、悲伤、内疚有下降的发展趋势,负情绪的忽视和抑制、正情绪抑制也有增强的发展趋势.(4)情绪和情绪调节存在着一定的性别差异.本文对社会文化因素在发展趋势和性别差异中的可能影响进行了初步讨论.     

Social anxiety and interpretation biases for facial displays of emotion: emotion detection and ratings of social cost

The current study assessed the processing of facial displays of emotion (Happy, Disgust, and Neutral) of varying emotional intensities in participants with high vs. low social anxiety. Use of facial expressions of varying intensities allowed for strong external validity and a fine-grained analysis of interpretation biases. Sensitivity to perceiving negative evaluation in faces (i.e., emotion detection) was assessed at both long (unlimited) and brief (60 ms) stimulus durations. In addition, ratings of perceived social cost were made indicating what participants judged it would be like to have a social interaction with a person exhibiting the stimulus emotion. Results suggest that high social anxiety participants did not demonstrate biases in their sensitivity to perceiving negative evaluation (i.e. disgust) in facial expressions. However, high social anxiety participants did estimate the perceived cost of interacting with someone showing disgust to be significantly greater than low social anxiety participants, regardless of the intensity of the disgust expression. These results are consistent with a specific type of interpretation bias in which participants with social anxiety have elevated ratings of the social cost of interacting with individuals displaying negative evaluation.     

Emotions in reading: Disgust, empathy and the contextual learning hypothesis

Emotion effects in reading have typically been investigated by manipulating words' emotional valence and arousal in lexical decision. The standard finding is that valence and arousal can have both facilitatory and inhibitory effects, which is hard to reconcile with current theories of emotion processing in reading. Here, we contrasted these theories with the contextual-learning hypothesis, according to which, sensitivity to a specific emotion - disgust in the present study - rather than valence or arousal affects lexical decision performance. Participants were divided into two groups (high versus low disgust sensitivity). Results showed that participants with high disgust sensitivity showed an inhibitory effect, whereas participants with low-disgust sensitivity showed a facilitatory effect. Individual differences in lexical decision performance were predicted by disgust sensitivity but not valence, arousal, or general emotion sensitivity. These findings highlight the need to focus on individual differences both in studies and theories of emotion processing in reading.