Reactions to facial expressions: effects of social context and speech anxiety on responses to neutral, anger, and joy expressions

2004 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott R Vrana ◽  
Daniel Gross
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Speech Anxiety

Shared attention amplifies the processing of emotional faces

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arianna Schiano Lomoriello ◽  
Mattia Doro ◽  
Paola Sessa ◽  
Ivana Konvalinka
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Subjective Perception ◽  
Neural Processing ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Shared Attention ◽  
The Social ◽  
Early Posterior Negativity ◽  
Shared Context

Previous studies have shown that sharing an experience, without communicating, affects people’s subjective perception of the experience, often by intensifying it. However, the effect of shared experience on the underlying neural processing of information is not well understood. In this study, we aimed to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying shared attention by implementing a dual- EEG study where participants were required to attend to and judge the intensity of neutral, angry and happy faces, simultaneously or independently. In order to study whether the presence of another individual modulates an individual's perception and processing of facial expressions, we implemented three experimental conditions: 1) participants performed the task alone, in the absence of a social context (unshared condition), 2) participants performed the task simultaneously next to each other in pairs, without receiving feedback about the other participant's responses (shared no feedback) and 3) participants performed the task simultaneously while receiving the feedback (shared with feedback). We focused on two face-sensitive ERP components: the N170 and the Early Posterior Negativity (EPN). We found that the amplitude of the N170 was greater in the shared with feedback condition compared to the other conditions, reflecting a top-down effect of shared attention on the structural encoding of faces, irrespective of valence. In addition, the EPN was significantly greater in both shared context conditions compared to the unshared condition, reflecting an enhanced attention allocation in the processing of emotional content of faces, modulated by the social context. Behaviourally, we found a modulation on the perceived intensity of the neutral faces only when participants received the feedback of the other person’s ratings, by amplifying the perceived neutrality of faces. Taken together, these results suggest that shared attention amplifies the neural processing of faces, regardless of the valence of facial expressions.

The effect of personality and social context on willingness to share emotion information on social media

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damien Dupré ◽  
Nicole Andelic ◽  
Anna Zajac ◽  
Gawain Morrison ◽  
Gary John McKeown
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Facial Expression ◽  
Personality Traits ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Facial Emotion ◽  
Emotional Information ◽  
New Sensors

Sharing personal information is an important way of communicating on social media. Among the information possibly shared, new sensors and tools allow people to share emotion information via facial emotion recognition. This paper questions whether people are prepared to share personal information such as their own emotion on social media. In the current study we examined how factors such as felt emotion, motivation for sharing on social media as well as personality affected participants’ willingness to share self-reported emotion or facial expression online. By carrying out a GLMM analysis, this study found that participants’ willingness to share self-reported emotion and facial expressions was influenced by their personality traits and the motivation for sharing their emotion information that they were given. From our results we can conclude that the estimated level of privacy for certain emotional information, such as facial expression, is influenced by the motivation for sharing the information online.

scholarly journals Contextual effects on smile perception and recognition memory

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva G. Krumhuber ◽  
Sylwia Hyniewska ◽  
Anna Orlowska
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Recognition Memory ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Positive Emotion ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Context Information ◽  
Emotion Classification ◽  
Context Condition ◽  
Emotion Displays ◽  
Physical Attributes

AbstractMost past research has focused on the role played by social context information in emotion classification, such as whether a display is perceived as belonging to one emotion category or another. The current study aims to investigate whether the effect of context extends to the interpretation of emotion displays, i.e. smiles that could be judged either as posed or spontaneous readouts of underlying positive emotion. A between-subjects design (N = 93) was used to investigate the perception and recall of posed smiles, presented together with a happy or polite social context scenario. Results showed that smiles seen in a happy context were judged as more spontaneous than the same smiles presented in a polite context. Also, smiles were misremembered as having more of the physical attributes (i.e., Duchenne marker) associated with spontaneous enjoyment when they appeared in the happy than polite context condition. Together, these findings indicate that social context information is routinely encoded during emotion perception, thereby shaping the interpretation and recognition memory of facial expressions.

Emotion Categorization Perception in Schizophrenia in Conversations with Different Social Contexts

2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 438-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jia Huang ◽  
Raymond C. K. Chan ◽  
Xiaobin Lu ◽  
Zishun Tong
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Emotion Identification ◽  
Schizophrenia Group ◽  
Response Slope ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Shift Point

Objective: The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the boundaries between the happy and angry emotions of schizophrenia would be influenced by social context and the difference in emotion categorization boundaries between schizophrenia patients and healthy controls. Method: Eighteen patients with schizophrenia and 16 healthy controls were given a forced-choice emotion identification task in which they were required to listen to a series of conversations with different social contexts. The stimuli were linear morphed facial expressions between ‘happy’ and ‘angry’ emotions. For each type of social context, the shift point was used as the parameter to estimate when the subjects began to perceive the morphed facial expression as angry. The response slope was used to estimate how abruptly this change in perception occurred. Results: There was no significant difference in the schizophrenia group in the shift point of emotion categorization perception for four categories of conversations occurring in different social contexts. Compared with the healthy controls, the schizophrenia group demonstrated a steeper response slope at the shift point regardless of the conversation type. Conclusion: The patients with schizophrenia were less discriminative in their categorization of emotion perception in conversations with different social contexts. The schizophrenia patients, however, were more alert to angry facial expressions in the process of facial expressions morphing from happy to angry, independent of the social context.

scholarly journals Facial Mimicry and Social Context Affect Smile Interpretation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Orlowska ◽  
Magdalena Rychlowska ◽  
Piotr Szarota ◽  
Eva Krumhuber
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Context Information ◽  
Verbal Information ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Emotional Displays ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Impact

Theoretical accounts and empirical research suggest that people use various sources of information, including sensorimotor simulation and social context, while judging emotional displays. However, the evidence on how those factors can interplay is limited. The present research tested whether social context information has a greater impact on perceivers’ smile judgments when mimicry is experimentally restricted. In Study 1, participants watched images of affiliative smiles presented with verbal descriptions of situations associated with happiness or politeness. Half the participants could freely move their faces while rating the extent to which the smiles communicated affiliation, whereas for the other half mimicry was restricted via a pen-in-mouth procedure. As predicted, smiles were perceived as more affiliative when the social context was polite than when it was happy. Importantly, the effect of context information was significantly larger among participants who could not freely mimic the facial expressions. Study 2 replicated these findings, thereby controlling for empathy and mood, and showed that social context also influences smile discrimination. Together, the findings extend the evidence on the role of verbal information in the interpretation of facial expressions and suggest that mimicry importantly modulates the impact of social context information on smile perception.

scholarly journals Laughter down-regulates negative emotional arousal amongst friends

F1000Research ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 325
Author(s):  
Mimi Borrelli ◽  
vikram sinha ◽  
Sophie Scott
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Positive Affect ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Emotional Arousal ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Negative Arousal ◽  
Neutral Mood ◽  
Dependent Variables ◽  
Post Hoc

Laughter is contagious, sensitive to social context, and can be used to mitigate negative emotional states. This experiment tested whether moments of transition from negative to positive affect were associated with more laughter if in familiar compared to unfamiliar company. 90 participants (47 females, mean age 20.61 years), either familiar (N=42) or unfamiliar (N=48) to the principle researcher, were randomly assigned to listen to 44 seconds of music which induced a fearful affect, positive affect or a neutral mood, followed by 30 seconds of infectious laughter (N=30/group). Filmed facial expressions were coded for four dependent variables (duration: half smile; full smile; laugh, and extent: peak mirth) of amusement in response to the laughter. Familiar participants fully smiled for longer than unfamiliar participants (F(1,84)=4.15, p=.045). There was an affect-familiarity interaction for peak mirth (F(2,84)=4.68, p=.01), time spent half smiling F(2,84)=5.00, p=.009), and fully smiling (F(2,84)=3.48, p=.035). Post hoc analyses revealed familiar participants exhibited greater peak mirth and smiled (half and full) for longer than unfamiliar participants in the fearful affect condition.  Laughter and positive emotions may be used to moderate negative arousal more amongst people known to each other than amongst strangers.

scholarly journals When the Good Guy Becomes the Bad Boy: Social Information Modulates the Neural, Physiological and Subjective Responses to Emotional Facial Expressions

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martial Mermillod ◽  
Delphine Grynberg ◽  
Magdalena Rychlowska ◽  
Nicolas Vermeulen ◽  
Paula M. Niedenthal ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Perceptual Processing ◽  
Emotional Stimuli ◽  
Emotional Facial Expressions ◽  
Basic Emotions ◽  
Subjective Responses ◽  
The Past ◽  
Valence And Arousal

AbstractIn the past decade, different studies have suggested that high-order factors could influence the perceptual processing of emotional stimuli. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the effect of congruent vs. incongruent social information (positive, negative or no information related to the character of the target) on subjective (perceived and felt valence and arousal), physiological (facial mimicry) as well as on neural (P100 and N170) responses to dynamic emotoional facial expressions (EFE) that varied from neutral to one of the six basic emotions. Across three studies, the results showed (1) reduced valence and arousal evaluation of EFE when associated with incongruent social information (Study 1), (2) increased electromyographical responses (Study 2) and significant modulation of P100 and N170 components (Study 3) when EFE were associated with social (positive and negative) information (vs. no information). These studies revealed that positive or negative social information reduced subjective responses to incongruent EFE and produces a similar neural and physiological boost of the early perceptual processing of EFE irrespective of their congruency. In conclusion, this study suggested that social context (positive or negative) enhances the necessity to be alert to any subsequent cues.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document