Alexithymia Is Related to the Need for More Emotional Intensity to Identify Static Fearful Facial Expressions.

Francesca Starita,Caterina Bertini,Khatereh Borhani,Cristina Scarpazza

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00929

Francesca Starita, Caterina Bertini + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00929

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Abstract

Individuals with high levels of alexithymia, a personality trait marked by difficulties in identifying and describing feelings and an externally oriented style of thinking, appear to require more time to accurately recognize intense emotional facial expressions (EFEs). However, in everyday life, EFEs are displayed at different levels of intensity and individuals with high alexithymia may also need more emotional intensity to identify EFEs. Nevertheless, the impact of alexithymia on the identification of EFEs, which vary in emotional intensity, has largely been neglected. To address this, two experiments were conducted in which participants with low (LA) and high (HA) levels of alexithymia were assessed in their ability to identify static (Experiment 1) and dynamic (Experiment 2) morphed faces ranging from neutral to intense EFEs. Results showed that HA needed more emotional intensity than LA to identify static fearful – but not happy or disgusted – faces. On the contrary, no evidence was found that alexithymia affected the identification of dynamic EFEs. These results extend current literature suggesting that alexithymia is related to the need for more perceptual information to identify static fearful EFEs.

Highlights

The identification of emotional facial expressions (EFEs) is fundamental for social interaction and survival of the individual (Adolphs, 2002)
Newman-Keuls post hoc test shows that HA had higher point of subjective equality (PSE) compared to LA only for the fearful emotional facial expression
Instead, we manipulated emotional intensity of static and dynamic EFEs. Under these conditions we showed that HA need more emotional intensity to identify static fearful EFEs, compared to LA

Summary

Introduction

The identification of emotional facial expressions (EFEs) is fundamental for social interaction and survival of the individual (Adolphs, 2002). Research has shown that this ability is affected by clinical conditions such as depression and anxiety (Demenescu et al, 2010) or schizophrenia (Kohler et al, 2009) and by subclinical differences in the ability to process emotional stimuli, such as alexithymia (Grynberg et al, 2012). Previous research found alexithymia to be related to worse performance in EFE recognition (Lane et al, 1996; Jessimer and Markham, 1997). Previous literature mainly manipulated stimulus presentation time, showing that the difficulty in EFE identification was evident when stimuli were presented under temporal constraints but not when stimulus exposure time was extended (for a review see Grynberg et al, 2012). When EFEs were presented for 66 or 100 ms, level of alexithymia was negatively

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