In my mind, we all smile: A case of in-group favoritism

The goal of the present study was to examine whether a highly valued social behavior—the smile—is attributed more frequently to in-group than to out-group members. For this, participants were asked to read a vignette describing a protagonist in a non-emotional situation, and to choose a facial expression that would be appropriate to the context. For Study 1 the vignette depicted a potentially social context, whereas for Study 2, the context was strictly non-social. In both studies, participants of European descent attributed smiles more often to members of their in-group, whereas they attributed a larger number of neutral faces to out-group members. In a third study the same pattern of attributions was found for recent immigrants from French speaking African countries and from Asian countries. These results suggest the presence of an in-group bias in the attribution of smiles.     

Effects of facial expression on working memory

In long‐term memory (LTM) emotional content may both enhance and impair memory, however, disagreement remains whether emotional content exerts different effects on the ability to maintain and manipulate information over short intervals. Using a working‐memory (WM) recognition task requiring the monitoring of faces displaying facial expressions of emotion, participants judged each face as identical (target) or not (non‐target) to that presented 2 trials back (2‐back). Negative expression was better and faster recognised, illustrated by higher target discriminability and target detection. Positive and negative expressions also induced a more liberal detection bias compared with neutral. Taking the preceding item into account, additional accuracy impairment (negative preceding negative target) and enhancement effects (negative or positive preceding neutral target) appeared. This illustrates a differential modulation of WM based on the affective tone of the target (mirroring LTM enhancement‐ and recognition bias effects), and of the preceding item (enhanced and impaired target detection).     

Motor,affective and cognitive empathy in adolescence: Interrelations between facial electromyography and self-reported trait and state measures

This study examined interrelations of trait and state empathy in an adolescent sample. Self-reported affective trait empathy and cognitive trait empathy were assessed during a home visit. During a test session at the university, motor empathy (facial electromyography), and self-reported affective and cognitive state empathy were assessed in response to empathy-inducing film clips portraying happiness and sadness. Adolescents who responded with stronger motor empathy consistently reported higher affective state empathy. Adolescents' motor empathy was also positively related to cognitive state empathy, either directly or indirectly via affective state empathy. Whereas trait empathy was consistently, but modestly, related to state empathy with sadness, for state empathy with happiness few trait–state associations were found. Together, the findings provide support for the notion that empathy is a multi-faceted phenomenon. Motor, affective and cognitive empathy seem to be related processes, each playing a different role in the ability to understand and share others' feelings.     

Emotion recognition in children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders

There is a limited amount of research that examines social-emotional functioning in children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), and the majority of it relies on parent and teacher reports of social impairments. Because these provide broad measures of social function, they fail to elucidate the underlying specific skills with which this group of children has difficulty. The current study examines emotion-recognition abilities in children with FASD, as it plays a central role in social interaction. Participants were 22 children with diagnosed FASD (ages 8–14), and age- and gender-matched typically developing controls. Tasks included measures of emotion recognition from three nonlinguistic modalities: facial expressions, emotional tone of voice, and body positioning and movement. Participant’s parents completed measures of adaptive and behavioral function that were related to children’s performance on aspects of emotion recognition. Overall, the results show that children with FASD have more difficulties with emotion recognition than typically developing age-matched peers, but these difficulties may not be clinically significant (e.g., smaller effect size) or may be specific to the age of the individual exhibiting the emotion (i.e., child vs. adult). These results are discussed in the context of previous studies.     

Overt congruent facial reaction to dynamic emotional expressions in 9–10-month-old infants

The current study aimed to extend the understanding of the early development of spontaneous facial reactions toward observed facial expressions. Forty-six 9- to 10-month-old infants observed video clips of dynamic human facial expressions that were artificially created with morphing technology. The infants’ facial responses were recorded, and the movements of the facial action unit 12 (e.g., lip-corner raising, associated with happiness) and facial action unit 4 (e.g., brow-lowering, associated with anger) were visually evaluated by multiple naïve raters. Results showed that (1) infants make congruent, observable facial responses to facial expressions, and (2) these specific facial responses are enhanced during repeated observation of the same emotional expressions. These results suggest the presence of observable congruent facial responses in the first year of life, and that they appear to be influenced by contextual information, such as the repetition of presentation of the target emotional expressions.     

Facial gender confirmation surgery—review of the literature and recommendations for Version 8 of the WPATH Standards of Care

Facial gender confirmation surgery (FGCS), also popularly known and referred to in the scientific literature as facial feminization surgery (FFS), was previously treated as a collection of aesthetic procedures complementing other aspects of gender-confirming surgery. Recent literature on quality-of-life outcomes following FGCS has supported the substantial impact these procedures have on overall well-being and reduction of psychosocial sequelae in patients. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health Standards of Care, Version 7 (WPATH SOC 7), did not deem FGCS a medical necessity. Based on these new studies, increasing evidence points to the need to include FGCS among medically necessary gender-confirming surgeries, though more-prospective studies are needed. Updates to the WPATH SOC 8 are proposed based on available quality of life studies.     

女性面孔吸引力的加工及其对男性诚实道德行为的影响:一项ERP研究

研究考察了不同女性面孔吸引力情境对男性被试诚实道德决策行为的影响,同时采用ERP技术对社会情境中面孔吸引力的信息加工方式特点进行探究。结果发现,高面孔吸引力记录员情境中被试倾向更加真实地报告自己的预测结果而表现出更多诚实的道德决策;ERP结果则发现高吸引力记录员面孔较之于低吸引力记录员面孔在反应提示界面在大脑中后部诱发更大的早期N200成分。结果提示,在与面孔审美评价无关的社会情境中个体面孔的吸引力信息能够被快速识别与自动化加工,同时也会直接促进他人自身的道德行为水平。     

能以貌取人吗? 面孔宽高比研究述评

面孔宽高比是左右颧骨点之间的距离除以上面高所得到的比值,被认为是人类面孔性别二态特征之一。男性面孔宽高比被认为是男性睾酮水平的可信外显指标,与攻击行为、欺诈等不道德行为存在显著关联,并受到社会经济地位的调节;面孔宽高比与上进心、对内群体成员的牺牲精神等男性化积极社会行为亦存在显著关联。睾酮水平被认为是面孔宽高比和社会行为两者背后的共变因素,并引起激烈争论:面孔宽高比的性别差异在多个研究中未获支持,男性面孔宽高比与睾酮水平存在关联的直接证据亦有待进一步夯实。     

Automatic actions: Agency,intentionality, and responsibility

This article discusses a challenge to the traditional intentional-causalist conceptions of action and intentionality as well as to our everyday and legal conceptions of responsibility, namely the psychological discovery that the greatest part of our alleged actions are performed automatically, that is unconsciously and without a proximal intention causing and sustaining them. The main part of the article scrutinizes several mechanisms of automatic behavior, how they work, and whether the resulting behavior is an action. These mechanisms include actions caused by distal implementation intentions, four types of habit and habitualization, mimicry, and semantically induced automatic behavior (which is later disregarded because of its lack of clarity). According to the intentional-causalist criterion, the automatic behaviors resulting from all but one of these mechanisms turn out to be actions and to be intentional; and even the behavior resulting from the remaining mechanism (naturally acquired habits) is something we can be responsible for. Hence, the challenge, seen from close up, does not really call the traditional conception of action and intentionality into question.     

情绪感染的发生机制

原始性情绪感染理论认为, 情绪感染是一个“情绪觉察-无意识模仿-生理反馈-情绪体验”的过程, 情绪感染是一个由生理诱发情绪的过程。早在1884年, 詹姆士和兰格就提出了情绪外周学说, 同样描述了从身体变化到情绪变化的关系路径, 但没有描述从刺激事件到外周身体变化的发生机制。对情绪感染的发生机制的研究能揭示这一“自下而上”的情绪产生机制。研究选取有效大学生被试62名, 参与下列研究：(1) 在眼动实验中使用情绪图片作为感官情绪信息, 以考察觉察者的情绪觉察水平。(2) 在生物反馈实验中, 使用仿真课堂教学视频作为感官情绪信息, 以考察觉察者的无意识模仿水平和生理反馈水平。使用路径分析证实了情绪感染的路径机制, 在真实情境的诱发下, 这种通过生理唤醒而诱发情绪的机制是可能的。