Abstract
In a paradigm facilitating smile misattribution, facial responses and ratings to contempt and joy were investigated in individuals with or without gelotophobia (fear of being laughed at). Participants from two independent samples ( N1 = 83, N2 = 50) rated the intensity of eight emotions in 16 photos depicting joy, contempt, and different smiles. Facial responses were coded by the Facial Action Coding System in the second study. Compared with non-fearful individuals, gelotophobes rated joy smiles as less joyful and more contemptuous. Moreover, gelotophobes showed less facial joy and more contempt markers. The contempt ratings were comparable between the two groups. Looking at the photos of smiles lifted the positive mood of non-gelotophobes, whereas gelotophobes did not experience an increase. We hypothesize that the interpretation bias of “joyful faces hiding evil minds” (i.e., being also contemptuous) and exhibiting less joy facially may complicate social interactions for gelotophobes and serve as a maintaining factor of gelotophobia.
Highlights
Our results showed that gelotophobia biases the judgment of facially displayed joy smiles
While individuals with no fear of being laughed at related only joy to the photos of joy smiles, gelotophobes responded to these joy smiles by assigning less joy and more contempt compared with individuals with no fear (H1a, H1b)
Gelotophobes perceive joy displays to contain more contempt compared with individuals with no fear and show more frequent contempt displays toward such displays than individuals with no fear of being laughed at
Summary
For an empirical test of the hypotheses on joy and contempt smiles, photos of facially expressed joy and contempt smiles, as well as expressions of emotions, ambiguous expressions, and other kinds of smiles were studied (based on the works of Bänninger-Huber, 1996; Ekman, 1985). By adding further smiles and emotion expressions beyond joyful and contemptuous smiles, it could be tested whether the gelotophobes’ bias in the perception is specific to joy and contempt and not a general inability to judging smiles and emotion expressions. For the rating of other expressions (basic emotions, smiles, ambiguous expressions), it was expected that individuals with no fear and gelotophobes would not differ in the emotion assignment, as gelotophobes do not generally lack the ability to rate facial expressions of others (see Papousek et al, 2009), but have a specific bias in joy and contempt. Beyond the methods utilized in Study 1, Study 2 further accounted for trait positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) to control for any habitual tendency to rate positive emotions lower in low-trait PA or to rate negative emotions higher in high-trait NA This was important because gelotophobia has been shown to go along with lower levels of joy on a state and trait level (Ruch et al, 2014). It was expected that by engaging with social stimuli entailing smiling and laughter, the mood of non-fearful individuals would lift, while gelotophobes would not experience the same increase (H6)
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