Emotion Perception Threshold: Individual Differences in Emotional Sensitivity

Abstract

In three studies we evaluated the reliability and validity of a new procedure for measuring individual differences in emotion perception. In this procedure, subjects are tachistoscopically presented photographs of human faces showing emotional expressions, and are asked to indicate whether the emotion was pleasant or unpleasant after each trial. A subject's emotion perception threshold is the minimum exposure duration required for better than chance performance. This threshold measure was stable (r= .80) over 2 weeks. Moreover, thresholds were significantly related to the Thinking–Feeling scale of the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator and to a measure of empathy, in the predicted directions. Thresholds were not related to current mood states, self-esteem, or thresholds for a nonemotional face judgment task. Buck's (1991) developmental-interactionist theory of emotional information processing, which distinguishes between “knowledge-by-acquaintance” and “knowledge-by-description,” is used as a framework for conceptualizing this threshold technique.