A Preliminary Evaluation of Emotional Experience and Expression Following Unilateral Brain Damage

Abstract

In this preliminary study, hemispheric specialization for the experience and expression of emotion was investigated. Subjects were right-brain-damaged (RBD), left-brain-damaged (LBD), and normal control (NC) right-handed adults, carefully matched on demographic and neurological variables. Facial expressions were videotaped while subjects described recollected emotional and nonemotional experiences. Expressions were later rated by trained judges for emotional intensity and category accuracy. To examine experience, subjects evaluated the intensity and accuracy with which they had produced their monologues. RBDs produced less intense facial expressions and reported less intense emotional experiences than LBDs and NCs. LBDs rated themselves as producing expressions with less accuracy than did RBDs and NCs. These findings are consistent with research that supports the right-hemisphere hypothesis for emotion. In addition, judges' ratings and subjects' self-reports of emotional intensity were positively correlated for normal but not for brain-damaged subjects.