Abstract
Recognition of others’ emotions is a key life ability that guides one’s own choices and behavior, and it hinges on the recognition of others’ facial cues. Independent studies indicate that facial appearance-based evaluations affect social behavior, but little is known about how facial appearance-based trustworthiness evaluations influence the recognition of specific emotions. We tested the hypothesis that first impressions based on facial appearance affect the recognition of basic emotions. A total of 150 participants completed a dynamic emotion recognition task. In a within-subjects design, the participants viewed videos of individuals with trustworthy-looking, neutral, or untrustworthy-looking faces gradually and continuously displaying basic emotions (happiness, anger, fear, and sadness). The participants’ accuracy and speed in recognizing the emotions were measured. Untrustworthy-looking faces decreased participants’ emotion recognition accuracy and speed, across emotion types. In addition, faces that elicited a positive inference of trustworthiness enhanced emotion recognition speed of fear and sadness, emotional expressions that signal another’s distress and modulate prosocial behavior. These findings suggest that facial appearance-based inferences may interfere with the ability to accurately and rapidly recognize others’ basic emotions.
Highlights
The accurate and fast recognition of others’ emotions is a key life ability that guides one’s own choices and actions (Elfenbein and Ambady, 2002)
Previous studies indicate that facial emotion recognition and the formation of trait impressions from facial appearance are two central and interconnected components of social interaction that rely on the same functional mechanisms, and both robustly affect behaviors and decisions by regulating adaptive appetitive/defensive responses
The aims of the present study were to investigate whether facial appearance-based inferences of trustworthiness affect emotion recognition and to determine whether this effect differs for specific emotions
Summary
The accurate and fast recognition of others’ emotions is a key life ability that guides one’s own choices and actions (Elfenbein and Ambady, 2002). Such ability is a central component of fluent social interactions, and difficulties in accurately detecting others’ emotional perspectives are associated with poor interpersonal functioning (Shimokawa et al, 2001). Previous studies indicate that facial emotion recognition and the formation of trait impressions from facial appearance are two central and interconnected components of social interaction that rely on the same functional mechanisms, and both robustly affect behaviors and decisions by regulating adaptive appetitive/defensive responses (see Todorov et al, 2015, for a review). The relationship between recognition of subtle facial emotional expressions and first-impression
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