Abstract
This study investigated whether different behaviors young adolescents can act during bullying episodes were associated with their ability to recognize morphed facial expressions of the six basic emotions, expressed at high and low intensity. The sample included 117 middle-school students (45.3% girls; mean age = 12.4 years) who filled in a peer nomination questionnaire and individually performed a computerized emotion recognition task. Bayesian generalized mixed-effects models showed a complex picture, in which type and intensity of emotions, students’ behavior and gender interacted in explaining recognition accuracy. Results were discussed with a particular focus on negative emotions and suggesting a “neutral” nature of emotion recognition ability, which does not necessarily lead to moral behavior but can also be used for pursuing immoral goals.
Highlights
The ability to recognize emotional facial expressions is important for everyday interpersonal relationships and for social adjustment [1,2]
Past research involving children and adolescents showed that accurate recognition of emotions is associated with higher social and academic competence, and with less externalizing and internalizing behaviors ([1,3,4,5]; see [2] for a meta-analysis). This basic ability has almost been overlooked in three decades of bullying research, despite the fact that scholars have repeatedly stressed the importance of emotions in this phenomenon (e.g., [6,7,8])
In the emotional domain, bullying research has widely focused on empathy, as recently summarized in a systematic review [8] and in two meta-analytic studies [9,10]
Summary
The ability to recognize emotional facial expressions is important for everyday interpersonal relationships and for social adjustment [1,2]. Past research involving children and adolescents showed that accurate recognition of emotions is associated with higher social and academic competence, and with less externalizing and internalizing behaviors ([1,3,4,5]; see [2] for a meta-analysis) Quite surprisingly, this basic ability has almost been overlooked in three decades of bullying research, despite the fact that scholars have repeatedly stressed the importance of emotions in this phenomenon (e.g., [6,7,8]). In the emotional domain, bullying research has widely focused on empathy, as recently summarized in a systematic review [8] and in two meta-analytic studies [9,10] These studies showed that understanding and sharing other people’s emotions is related to behavior students’ decide to act during bullying episodes, to date only two studies investigated a more basic skill, that is, emotion recognition ability [11,12]. Woods and colleagues [12] found that, controlling for gender, peer-nominated bullies did not differ from students not involved in bullying in their ability to recognize emotions, whereas
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