Emotional traits and recognition of facial expression of emotion

The relationship between an individual's habitual, emotional dispositions or tendencies — an aspect of personality — and his ability to recognize facially expressed emotions was explored. Previous studies have used global scores of recognition accuracy across several emotions, but failed to examine the relationship between emotion traits and recognition of specific emotion expressions. In the present study, these more specific relationships were examined. Results indicated that females with an inhibited-non-assertive personality style tended to have poorer emotion recognition scores than more socially oriented females. In contrast, for males, the relationship between traits and recognition scores was much more emotion specific: Emotion traits were not significantly related to a global measure of recognition accuracy but were related to recognition rates of certain emotion expressions — sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. For most of the emotions, males appeared to be more likely to see what they feel. Possible explanations of the findings in terms of perceptual set and other mechanisms are discussed. Implications for clinical studies and research are noted. The study also highlights the importance of separate analysis of data for specific emotions, as well as for sex.     

Recognition of Facial Expressions of Negative Emotions in Romantic Relationships

Previous research has demonstrated that individuals who were accurate at recognizing facial expressions of emotions reported better relationships with family and friends. The purpose of the present study was to test whether the ability to recognize facial expressions of negative emotions predicted greater relationship satisfaction with their romantic relationships and whether this link was mediated by constructive responses to conflict. Participants currently involved in a romantic relationship completed a validated performance measure of recognition of facial expressions and afterwards reported on the responses they engaged in during conflict with their romantic partner and rated their romantic relationship satisfaction. Results showed that accurate recognition of facial expressions of negative emotions (anger, contempt, disgust, fear, and sadness) predicted less conflict engaging behaviors during conflict with their romantic partners (but not positive problem solving and withdrawal), which in turn predicted greater relationship satisfaction. The present study is the first to show that the ability to recognize facial expressions of negative emotions is related to romantic relationship satisfaction and that constructive responses to conflict such as less conflict engaging behaviors, mediate this process.     

Warranted inferences of mediation and possibility of a threshold effect: Verifying the mediating effects of anger in situational crisis communication theory

Scholars have called for communication research to verify the causal claims of mediation models from a research design perspective, instead of only proving mediation statistically. This study validates whether and how anger mediates the causal effects of crisis types on publics’ responses in Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), including reputation, negative word-of-mouth intention, and purchase intention in China. Two experiments were conducted based on the experimental-causal-chain design. Results in Study 1 demonstrate that the causal relationships between three crisis types and publics’ emotional and other responses in China are consistent with findings in Western contexts. In Study 2, the results of a 2 (anger: low, high) x 3 (crisis types: victim crisis, accidental crisis, preventable crisis) factorial experiment reveal significant mediating effects of anger on publics’ responses in the victim and accidental crisis conditions, but not for preventable crises. This novel finding suggests the possibility of a threshold effect of anger in the mediating process. Specifically, anger has a mediating effect on publics’ responses when it is below the high-anger threshold. However, anger may no longer be the mediator when it exceeds this threshold. This finding empirically challenges the common assumption that emotions have a linear relationship with publics’ responses, thus offering a new research avenue and deeper understanding of how emotions function in crises. Therefore, this research serves as a pioneer, calling for future studies to validate other theories involving mediation to yield fruitful insights.     

Decoding and encoding facial expressions in preschool-age children

Preschool-age children drew, decoded, and encoded facial expressions depicting five different emotions. Each child was rated by two teachers on measures of school adjustment. Facial expressions encoded by the children were decoded by college undergraduates and the children's parents. Results were as follows: (1) accuracy of drawing, decoding and encoding each of the five emotions was consistent across the three tasks; (2) decoding ability was correlated with drawing ability among female subjects, but neither of these abilities was correlated with encoding ability; (3) decoding ability increased with age, while encoding ability increased with age among females and slightly decreased among males; (4) parents decoded facial expressions of their own children better than facial expressions of other children, and female parents were better decoders than male parents; (5) children's adjustment to school was related to their encoding and decoding skills and to their mothers' decoding skills; (6) children with better decoding skills were rated as being better adjusted by their parents.The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Greater Rochester Jewish Community Center, Early Childhood Department, and the parents of the participating children in the completion of this study. Special thanks to Sandra Walter, Director of the Early Childhood Department, for her cooperation and support during all stages of the project.     

Attachment Style Predicts Jealous Reactions to Viewing Touch Between a Romantic Partner and Close Friend: Implications for Internet Social Communication

Using vignettes and online photos, this study explored the relationship between touch intimacy, biological sex, attachment, and the experience of jealous emotions in the context of seeing one’s partner touch a close, opposite-sex friend. Results indicated that hypothetical scenarios elicited significant emotional responses and increases in touch intimacy (as depicted in digital photos) heightened these responses. Males indicated more sexual arousal when seeing their partners interacting with a friend, while females indicated more sadness, fear, and envy. In terms of attachment, preoccupied individuals expressed the most anger and fear, dismissives and secures expressed the least envy and embarrassment, dismissives expressed the least fear, and fearfuls expressed the most sexual arousal. The two forms of touch (face touch and lower back touch) elicited stronger jealous emotions (anger, sadness, fear, and embarrassment) than no touch. Lastly, in regards to lower back touch, fearfully attached males responded with the most fear, females with the most anger, sadness, fear, and envy, and fearfully attached individuals the least amount of fear. This occurred despite the fact that face touch was characterized as more intimate than lower back touch; our results suggest that this form of touch may have been perceived as sexual. We relate our findings to the context of viewing digital photos on social networking websites.     

Children’s Recognition and Discrimination of Fear and Disgust Facial Expressions

Facial expressions of fear and disgust have repeatedly been found to be less well recognized than those of other basic emotions by children. We undertook two studies in which we investigated the recognition and visual discrimination of these expressions in school-age children. In Study 1, children (5, 6, 9, and 10 years of age) were shown pairs of facial expressions, and asked to tell which one depicted a target emotion. The results indicated that accuracy in 9- and 10-year-olds was higher than in 5- and 6-year-olds for three contrasts: disgust–anger, fear–surprise, and fear–sadness. Younger children had more difficulty recognizing disgust when it was presented along with anger, and in recognizing fear when it was presented along with surprise. In Study 2, children (5, 6, 9, and 10 years of age) were shown a target expression along with two other expressions, and were asked to point to the expression that was the most similar to the target. Contrary to our expectations, even 5- and 6-year-olds were very accurate in discriminating fear and disgust from the other emotions, suggesting that visual perception was not the main limiting factor for the recognition of these emotions in school-age children.     

Examining gender differences in the relationship between dating violence victimization and anger in college students

It has been well established that dating violence victimization is associated with various mental health problems. Relatively, little is known about similarities and differences between mental health correlates of dating violence victimization for males and females. We examined the associations between physical and psychological victimization experiences and measures of anger in a sample of 200 male and female undergraduates. Results suggest that men's victimization was more strongly associated with different forms of anger than women's victimization.     

Effects of Social Anxiety on Emotional Mimicry and Contagion: Feeling Negative,but Smiling Politely

Socially anxiety may be related to a different pattern of facial mimicry and contagion of others’ emotions. We report two studies in which participants with different levels of social anxiety reacted to others’ emotional displays, either shown on a computer screen (Study 1) or in an actual social interaction (Study 2). Study 1 examined facial mimicry and emotional contagion in response to displays of happiness, anger, fear, and contempt. Participants mimicked negative and positive emotions to some extent, but we found no relation between mimicry and the social anxiety level of the participants. Furthermore, socially anxious individuals were more prone to experience negative emotions and felt more irritated in response to negative emotion displays. In Study 2, we found that social anxiety was related to enhanced mimicry of smiling, but this was only the case for polite smiles and not for enjoyment smiles. These results suggest that socially anxious individuals tend to catch negative emotions from others, but suppress their expression by mimicking positive displays. This may be explained by the tendency of socially anxious individuals to avoid conflict or rejection.     

Recognizing Emotions in a Foreign Language

Expressions of basic emotions (joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust) can be recognized pan-culturally from the face and it is assumed that these emotions can be recognized from a speaker’s voice, regardless of an individual’s culture or linguistic ability. Here, we compared how monolingual speakers of Argentine Spanish recognize basic emotions from pseudo-utterances (“nonsense speech”) produced in their native language and in three foreign languages (English, German, Arabic). Results indicated that vocal expressions of basic emotions could be decoded in each language condition at accuracy levels exceeding chance, although Spanish listeners performed significantly better overall in their native language (“in-group advantage”). Our findings argue that the ability to understand vocally-expressed emotions in speech is partly independent of linguistic ability and involves universal principles, although this ability is also shaped by linguistic and cultural variables.

Mid-Adolescents’ and Adults’ Recognition of Vocal Cues of Emotion and Social Intent: Differences by Expression and Speaker Age

Previous research has suggested that the ability to recognize vocal portrayals of socio-emotional expressions improves with age throughout childhood and adolescence. The current study examined whether stimulus-level factors (i.e., the age of the speaker and the type of expression being conveyed) interacted with listeners’ developmental stage to predict listeners’ recognition accuracy. We assessed mid-adolescent (n = 50, aged 13–15 years) and adult (n = 87, 18–30 years) listeners’ ability to recognize basic emotions and social expressions in the voices of both adult and youth actors. Adults’ emotional prosody was better recognized than that of youth, and adult listeners were more accurate overall than were mid-adolescents. Interaction effects revealed that youths’ accuracy was equivalent to adult listeners’ when hearing adult portrayals of anger, disgust, friendliness, happiness, and meanness, and youth portrayals of disgust, happiness, and meanness. Our findings highlight the importance of speaker characteristics and type of expression on listeners’ ability to recognize vocal cues of emotion and social intent.     

Typology of reactions to intimate partner violence among men and women arrested for partner violence

This study examined behavioral and emotional responses to partner-initiated violence reported by men and women court-ordered to domestic violence counseling. Respondents provided Likert-type ratings of behavioral and emotional responses to their partners' initiated violence. Cluster analysis to determine heterogeneity of emotional and behavioral responses resulted in a three-cluster solution. The profile for Cluster 1, predominantly male, showed no specific behavioral or emotional reaction pattern. Cluster 2 respondents, evenly split between males and females, but comprising a high proportion of all of the female participants, reported frequently doing what the partner wanted and attempting to escape. Emotional responses experienced by Cluster 2 respondents were anger, insult, and fear. Cluster 3, predominantly male, reported a frequent tendency to use force in response and escape when their partners initiated physical violence. Emotionally, Cluster 3 participants reported experiencing high levels of anger and insult, and relatively low levels of fear and low levels of amusement. Implications of these findings for development of gender-based intervention strategies will be discussed.     

Company Post-Crisis Communication Strategies and the Psychological Mechanism Underlying Consumer Reactions

A theoretical framework is developed to explain the mechanisms that underlie the effectiveness of matching postcrisis communication strategies to the crisis types on relevant consumer reactions. Two studies are conducted regarding an actual crisis case: the Costa Concordia shipwreck on 2012. Study 1 provides evidence of more favorable consumer reactions to a company when confession strategy and preventable crisis are matched. The results verify that consumers’ emotions of anger and sympathy play a mediating role. Study 2 demonstrates corporate reputation's moderating role on the link between postcrisis communication strategy and sympathy and, through it, on consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral responses.     

Bullying victimization,negative emotions,and substance use: utilizing general strain theory to examine the undesirable outcomes of childhood bullying victimization in adolescence and young adulthood

Bullying victimization has been directly associated with a variety of negative outcomes, but there are still many unknowns as to how deleterious emotional states resulting from victimization influence other undesirable events. The current study draws on Agnew’s general strain theory to examine multiple outcomes of youth victimized by repeated bullying prior to adolescence. Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 were used to examine indicators of diminished moods and negative emotions on substance use for bullying victims in adolescence and again during young adulthood. Findings from various LISERL models indicate that bullying victimization directly increases diminished moods for males and females in adolescence. Additionally, childhood bullying victimization directly increases substance use in adolescence and young adulthood for males but not females. Finally, diminished moods in adolescence and negative emotions in young adulthood increase substance use for females but not for males. Policy implications and limitations for this analysis are discussed.     

Self,Emotions, and Extreme Violence: Extending Symbolic Interactionist Theorizing

Extreme violence revolves around actions of individuals who are emotionally aroused and willing to kill themselves, if need be, to inflict harm on enemies. Terrorism, gangbanging, and genocide are conspicuous examples of extreme violence. This violence is ultimately driven by repressed negative emotions about self that are transmuted into variants of anger and combinations of anger with satisfaction‐happiness to produce emotions such as hatred, righteous anger, and vengeance. This theory combines symbolic interactionism's emphasis on identity and self with key ideas from gestalt theories, psychoanalytic theories, and interaction ritual theory as well as data from primatology, evolutionary biology, and neurology. I explain extreme violence as the outcome of several converging forces: the neurological capacity for humans as evolved apes to experience and express a large palate of high‐intensity emotions, the experience of shame in key institutional spheres, the repression of shame (and, at times, guilt and alienation as well as other highly charged negative emotions), the intensification and transmutation of these repressed emotions into variants and elaborations of anger, the making of external attributions blaming external targets for negative experiences, the portrayal of these targets in highly negative terms, and the charging up of positive emotions in interaction rituals directed at inflicting harm on external enemies.     

Sex Related Factors in the Perception of Threatening Facial Expressions

This study replicated and extended previously reported sex differences involving both viewer and target in the recognition of threatening facial expressions. Based on the assumption that the evolved cognitive mechanisms mediating anger recognition would have been designed by natural selection to operate quickly in the interests of survival, brief tachistoscopic presentation of stimulus photographs was used. Additionally, in contrast to prior published studies, the statistical methods of signal detection research were used to control for the confounding effects of non-random guessing. The main hypothesis, that anger posed by males would be more accurately perceived than anger posed by females, was supported. A secondary hypothesis, that female-posed anger would be more accurately perceived by women than by men, received partial support. Testosterone levels, measured inferentially in terms of diurnal cycles, failed to show the hypothesized positive relationship to accuracy of anger perception.     

The impact of expressing mixed valence emotions in organizational crisis communication on consumer’s negative word-of-mouth intention

This paper examines the impact of expressing different discrete emotions with a mixed valence (anger and hope) in organizational crisis communication on negative word-of-mouth on social media. In particular, the effects of expressing discrete emotions with a single valence (either positive or negative) versus mixed valence (expressing both positive and negative emotions) emotions are studied by means of a 4 (emotional message framing: control vs. positive emotion vs. negative emotion vs. mixed valence emotions) by 2 (crisis type: victim vs. preventable crisis) between-subjects experimental design (N?=?295). Results show that in a preventable crisis, expressing mixed valence emotions elicits higher perceived sincerity and more empathy towards the spokesperson, and subsequently less negative word-of-mouth compared to expressing either single emotions or the control condition. However, in the case of a victim crisis, expressing single emotions, and especially a negative emotion like anger, results in less negative word-of-mouth through an increase in perceived sincerity and empathy towards the spokesperson.     

Brief Report: Useful Information for Face Perception Is Described with FACS

When we perceive the emotions of other people, we extract much information from the face. The present experiment used FACS (Facial Action Coding System), which is an instrument that measures the magnitude of facial action from a neutral face to a changed, emotional face. Japanese undergraduates judged the emotion in pictures of 66 static Japanese male faces (11 static pictures for each of six basic expressions: happiness, surprise, fear, anger, sadness, and disgust), ranging from neutral faces to maximally expressed emotions. The stimuli had previously been scored with FACS and were presented in random order. A high correlation between the subjects' judgments of facial expressions and the FACS scores was found.     

Sex differences in nonverbal expressiveness: Emotional expression,personality, and impressions

Sex differences in expressiveness are well documented, but the reasons for and correlates of these important differences are not well studied. A comprehensive set of emotion-relevant personality measures was administered to 40 female and 39 male undergraduate participants, who were also videotaped in three situations: engaging in natural social interaction, describing a past emotional experience, and posing various emotions. Videotapes were judged by sets of naive observers as to emotion communicated and overall impression. Expressive females, who appeared friendly and dominant in social interaction, were found to have a hostile/aggressive personality (but this was not true of males). Expressive females also tended to look angry/disgusted when describing happy and sad experiences. The findings suggest that nonverbally skilled, charismatic women (but not men) may often possess a dominant/aggressive but self-controlled personality, in a new twist on the theory that sex differences in expressiveness result in part from the oppression of women in society.This research was supported in part by an intramural research grant from University of California, Riverside.     

Co‐marital sex and the sexual freedom movement∗

Schachter's (1964) cognitive labeling model of emotions was used to make predictions about the impact of presentation order of explicit sexual stimuli and order of reporting reactions to these stimuli on sexual and affective responses. Subjects (27 males, 23 females) viewed a series of sexually explicit slides in story‐line sequence, in reversed story‐line sequence, or in a random sequence. In counterbalanced order subjects rated how sexually arousing and disgusting the slides were to themselves. Males, but not females, reported being more disgusted when they rated disgust first than when they rated sexual arousal first. Additionally, males and females who saw the random presentation sequence reported more sexual arousal than those who saw the reversed story‐line sequence. Females also were more aroused by the random sequence them by the story‐line sequence, while males in these conditions did not differ in arousal. These results indicated that Schachter's model of emotions may be useful in explaining how people respond to sexual stimuli.     

Do infants express discrete emotions? Adult judgments of facial,vocal, and body actions

Adult judges were presented with videotape segments showing an infant displaying facial configurations hypothesized to express discomfort/pain, anger, or sadness according to differential emotions theory (Izard, Dougherty, & Hembree, 1983). The segments also included the infant's nonfacial behavior and aspects of the situational context. Judges rated the segments using a set of emotion terms or a set of activity terms. Results showed that judges perceived the discomfort/pain and anger segments as involving one or more negative emotions not predicted by differential emotions theory. The sadness segments were perceived as involving relatively little emotion overall. Body activity accompanying the discomfort/pain and anger configurations was judged to be more jerky and active than body activity accompanying the sadness configurations. The sadness segments were accompanied by relatively little body movement overall. The results thus fail to conform to the predictions of differential emotions theory but provide information that may contribute to the development of a theory of infant expressive behavior.This article is based on the second author's master's thesis. The authors thank Dennis Ross for his expert assistance in the data analyses.