Processes underlying congruent and incongruent facial reactions to emotional facial expressions.

The present electromyographic study is a first step toward shedding light on the involvement of affective processes in congruent and incongruent facial reactions to facial expressions. Further, empathy was investigated as a potential mediator underlying the modulation of facial reactions to emotional faces in a competitive, a cooperative, and a neutral setting. Results revealed less congruent reactions to happy expressions and even incongruent reactions to sad and angry expressions in the competition condition, whereas virtually no differences between the neutral and the cooperation condition occurred. Effects on congruent reactions were found to be mediated by cognitive empathy, indicating that the state of empathy plays an important role in the situational modulation of congruent reactions. Further, incongruent reactions to sad and angry faces in a competition setting were mediated by the emotional reaction of joy, supporting the assumption that incongruent facial reactions are mainly based on affective processes. Additionally, strategic processes (specifically, the goal to create and maintain a smooth, harmonious interaction) were found to influence facial reactions while being in a cooperative mindset. Now, further studies are needed to test for the generalizability of these effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hemispheric perception of emotional valence from facial expressions.

The authors previously reported that normal subjects are better at discriminating happy from neutral faces when the happy face is located to the viewer's right of the neutral face; conversely, discrimination of sad from neutral faces is better when the sad face is shown to the left, supporting a role for the left hemisphere in processing positive valence and for the right hemisphere in processing negative valence. Here, the authors extend this same task to subjects with unilateral cerebral damage (31 right, 28 left). Subjects with right damage performed worse when discriminating sad faces shown on the left, consistent with the prior findings. However, subjects with either left or right damage actually performed superior to normal controls when discriminating happy faces shown on the left. The authors suggest that perception of negative valence relies preferentially on the right hemisphere, whereas perception of positive valence relies on both left and right hemispheres. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Exploring emotional and cognitive conflict using speeded voluntary facial expressions.

Affective conflict and control may have important parallels to cognitive conflict and control, but these processes have been difficult to quantitatively study with emotionally naturalistic laboratory paradigms. The current study examines a modification of the AX-Continuous Performance Task (AX-CPT), a well-validated probe of cognitive conflict and control, for the study of emotional conflict. In the Emotional AX-CPT, speeded emotional facial expressions measured with electromyography (EMG) were used as the primary response modality, and index of emotional conflict. Bottom-up emotional conflict occurred on trials in which precued facial expressions were incongruent with the valence of an emotionally evocative picture probe (e.g., smiling to a negative picture). A second form of top-down conflict occurred in which the facial expression and picture probe were congruent, but the opposite expression was expected based on the precue. A matched version of the task was also performed (in a separate group of participants) with affectively neutral probe stimuli. Behavioral interference was observed, in terms of response latencies and errors, on all conflict trials. However, bottom-up conflict was stronger in the emotional version of the task compared to the neutral version; top-down conflict was similar across the two versions. The results suggest that voluntary facial expressions may be more sensitive to indexing emotional than nonemotional conflict, and importantly, may provide an ecologically valid method of examining how emotional conflict may manifest in behavior and brain activity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Happy mouth and sad eyes: Scanning emotional facial expressions.

There is evidence that specific regions of the face such as the eyes are particularly relevant for the decoding of emotional expressions, but it has not been examined whether scan paths of observers vary for facial expressions with different emotional content. In this study, eye-tracking was used to monitor scanning behavior of healthy participants while looking at different facial expressions. Locations of fixations and their durations were recorded, and a dominance ratio (i.e., eyes and mouth relative to the rest of the face) was calculated. Across all emotional expressions, initial fixations were most frequently directed to either the eyes or the mouth. Especially in sad facial expressions, participants more frequently issued the initial fixation to the eyes compared with all other expressions. In happy facial expressions, participants fixated the mouth region for a longer time across all trials. For fearful and neutral facial expressions, the dominance ratio indicated that both the eyes and mouth are equally important. However, in sad and angry facial expressions, the eyes received more attention than the mouth. These results confirm the relevance of the eyes and mouth in emotional decoding, but they also demonstrate that not all facial expressions with different emotional content are decoded equally. Our data suggest that people look at regions that are most characteristic for each emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Heightened sensitivity to facial expressions of emotion in borderline personality disorder.

Individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) have been hypothesized to exhibit significant problems associated with emotional sensitivity. The current study examined emotional sensitivity (i.e., low threshold for recognition of emotional stimuli) in BPD by comparing 20 individuals with BPD and 20 normal controls on their accuracy in identifying emotional expressions. Results demonstrated that, as facial expressions morphed from neutral to maximum intensity, participants with BPD correctly identified facial affect at an earlier stage than did healthy controls. Participants with BPD were more sensitive than healthy controls in identifying emotional expressions in general, regardless of valence. These findings could not be explained by participants with BPD responding faster with more errors. Overall, results appear to support the contention that heightened emotional sensitivity may be a core feature of BPD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Convergent and divergent responses to emotional displays of ingroup and outgroup.

In the present research, we test the assumption that emotional mimicry and contagion are moderated by group membership. We report two studies using facial electromyography (EMG; Study 1), Facial Action Coding System (FACS; Study 2), and self-reported emotions (Study 2) as dependent measures. As predicted, both studies show that ingroup anger and fear displays were mimicked to a greater extent than outgroup displays of these emotions. The self-report data in Study 2 further showed specific divergent reactions to outgroup anger and fear displays. Outgroup anger evoked fear, and outgroup fear evoked aversion. Interestingly, mimicry increased liking for ingroup models but not for outgroup models. The findings are discussed in terms of the social functions of emotions in group contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recognition of facial expressions of mixed emotions in school-age children exposed to terrorism.

This exploratory study aims at investigating the effects of terrorism on children’s ability to recognize emotions. A sample of 101 exposed and 102 nonexposed children (mean age = 11 years), balanced for age and gender, were assessed 20 months after a terrorist attack in Beslan, Russia. Two trials controlled for children’s ability to match a facial emotional stimulus with an emotional label and their ability to match an emotional label with an emotional context. The experimental trial evaluated the relation between exposure to terrorism and children’s free labeling of mixed emotion facial stimuli created by morphing between 2 prototypical emotions. Repeated measures analyses of covariance revealed that exposed children correctly recognized pure emotions. Four log-linear models were performed to explore the association between exposure group and category of answer given in response to different mixed emotion facial stimuli. Model parameters indicated that, compared with nonexposed children, exposed children (a) labeled facial expressions containing anger and sadness significantly more often than expected as anger, and (b) produced fewer correct answers in response to stimuli containing sadness as a target emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Left hemisphere specialization for response to positive emotional expressions: A divided output methodology.

An extensive literature credits the right hemisphere with dominance for processing emotion. Conflicting literature finds left hemisphere dominance for positive emotions. This conflict may be resolved by attending to processing stage. A divided output (bimanual) reaction time paradigm in which response hand was varied for emotion (angry; happy) in Experiments 1 and 2 and for gender (male; female) in Experiment 3 focused on response to emotion rather than perception. In Experiments 1 and 2, reaction time was shorter when right-hand responses indicated a happy face and left-hand responses an angry face, as compared to reversed assignment. This dissociation did not obtain with incidental emotion (Experiment 3). Results support the view that response preparation to positive emotional stimuli is left lateralized. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceived differences between chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and human (Homo sapiens) facial expressions are related to emotional interpretation.

Human face perception is a finely tuned, specialized process. When comparing faces between species, therefore, it is essential to consider how people make these observational judgments. Comparing facial expressions may be particularly problematic, given that people tend to consider them categorically as emotional signals, which may affect how accurately specific details are processed. The bared-teeth display (BT), observed in most primates, has been proposed as a homologue of the human smile (J. A. R. A. M. van Hooff, 1972). In this study, judgments of similarity between BT displays of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and human smiles varied in relation to perceived emotional valence. When a chimpanzee BT was interpreted as fearful, observers tended to underestimate the magnitude of the relationship between certain features (the extent of lip corner raise) and human smiles. These judgments may reflect the combined effects of categorical emotional perception, configural face processing, and perceptual organization in mental imagery and may demonstrate the advantages of using standardized observational methods in comparative facial expression research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)