Low Emotional Intensity Research Articles

Emotional Intensity Modulates the Integration of Bimodal Angry Expressions: ERP Evidence.

Integration of information from face and voice plays a central role in social interactions. The present study investigated the modulation of emotional intensity on the integration of facial-vocal emotional cues by recording EEG for participants while they were performing emotion identification task on facial, vocal, and bimodal angry expressions varying in emotional intensity. Behavioral results showed the rates of anger and reaction speed increased as emotional intensity across modalities. Critically, the P2 amplitudes were larger for bimodal expressions than for the sum of facial and vocal expressions for low emotional intensity stimuli, but not for middle and high emotional intensity stimuli. These findings suggested that emotional intensity modulates the integration of facial-vocal angry expressions, following the principle of Inverse Effectiveness (IE) in multimodal sensory integration.

Success, failure and emotions: examining the relationship between performance feedback and emotions in diagnostic reasoning

Students experience a variety of emotions following achievement outcomes which stand to influence how they learn and perform in academic settings. However, little is known about the link between student outcome emotions and dimensions of performance feedback in computer-based learning environments (CBLEs). Understanding the dynamics of this relationship is particularly important for high-stakes, competency-based domains such as medical education. In this study, we examined the relationship between medical students’ (N = 30) outcome emotion profiles and their performance on a diagnostic reasoning task in the CBLE, BioWorld. We found that participants could be organized into distinct emotion groups using k-means cluster analyses based on their self-reported outcome emotion profiles: an expected positive emotion cluster and negative emotion cluster and an unexpected low intensity emotion cluster. A clear relationship was found between emotion clusters and diagnostic performance such that participants classified to the positive emotion cluster had the highest performance; those classified to the negative emotion cluster had the lowest performance; and those classified to the low intensity emotion cluster had performance outcomes that fell between the other two. Our discussion focuses on the theoretical implications of emotion classification and design recommendations for learning environments and emotional interventions in computer-based contexts.

Neural processing of emotional-intensity predicts emotion regulation choice.

Emotional-intensity is a core characteristic of affective events that strongly determines how individuals choose to regulate their emotions. Our conceptual framework suggests that in high emotional-intensity situations, individuals prefer to disengage attention using distraction, which can more effectively block highly potent emotional information, as compared with engagement reappraisal, which is preferred in low emotional-intensity. However, existing supporting evidence remains indirect because prior intensity categorization of emotional stimuli was based on subjective measures that are potentially biased and only represent the endpoint of emotional-intensity processing. Accordingly, this study provides the first direct evidence for the role of online emotional-intensity processing in predicting behavioral regulatory-choices. Utilizing the high temporal resolution of event-related potentials, we evaluated online neural processing of stimuli's emotional-intensity (late positive potential, LPP) prior to regulatory-choices between distraction and reappraisal. Results showed that enhanced neural processing of intensity (enhanced LPP amplitudes) uniquely predicted (above subjective measures of intensity) increased tendency to subsequently choose distraction over reappraisal. Additionally, regulatory-choices led to adaptive consequences, demonstrated in finding that actual implementation of distraction relative to reappraisal-choice resulted in stronger attenuation of LPPs and self-reported arousal.

Validation of the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set--Bath Intensity Variations (ADFES-BIV): A Set of Videos Expressing Low, Intermediate, and High Intensity Emotions.

Most of the existing sets of facial expressions of emotion contain static photographs. While increasing demand for stimuli with enhanced ecological validity in facial emotion recognition research has led to the development of video stimuli, these typically involve full-blown (apex) expressions. However, variations of intensity in emotional facial expressions occur in real life social interactions, with low intensity expressions of emotions frequently occurring. The current study therefore developed and validated a set of video stimuli portraying three levels of intensity of emotional expressions, from low to high intensity. The videos were adapted from the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set (ADFES) and termed the Bath Intensity Variations (ADFES-BIV). A healthy sample of 92 people recruited from the University of Bath community (41 male, 51 female) completed a facial emotion recognition task including expressions of 6 basic emotions (anger, happiness, disgust, fear, surprise, sadness) and 3 complex emotions (contempt, embarrassment, pride) that were expressed at three different intensities of expression and neutral. Accuracy scores (raw and unbiased (Hu) hit rates) were calculated, as well as response times. Accuracy rates above chance level of responding were found for all emotion categories, producing an overall raw hit rate of 69% for the ADFES-BIV. The three intensity levels were validated as distinct categories, with higher accuracies and faster responses to high intensity expressions than intermediate intensity expressions, which had higher accuracies and faster responses than low intensity expressions. To further validate the intensities, a second study with standardised display times was conducted replicating this pattern. The ADFES-BIV has greater ecological validity than many other emotion stimulus sets and allows for versatile applications in emotion research. It can be retrieved free of charge for research purposes from the corresponding author.

Cognitive Workload and Psychophysiological Parameters During Multitask Activity in Helicopter Pilots.

Helicopter pilots are involved in a complex multitask activity, implying overuse of cognitive resources, which may result in piloting task impairment or in decision-making failure. Studies usually investigate this phenomenon in well-controlled, poorly ecological situations by focusing on the correlation between physiological values and either cognitive workload or emotional state. This study aimed at jointly exploring workload induced by a realistic simulated helicopter flight mission and emotional state, as well as physiological markers. The experiment took place in the helicopter full flight dynamic simulator. Six participants had to fly on two missions. Workload level, skin conductance, RMS-EMG, and emotional state were assessed. Joint analysis of psychological and physiological parameters associated with workload estimation revealed particular dynamics in each of three profiles. 1) Expert pilots showed a slight increase of measured physiological parameters associated with the increase in difficulty level. Workload estimates never reached the highest level and the emotional state for this profile only referred to positive emotions with low emotional intensity. 2) Non-Expert pilots showed increasing physiological values as the perceived workload increased. However, their emotional state referred to either positive or negative emotions, with a greater variability in emotional intensity. 3) Intermediate pilots were similar to Expert pilots regarding emotional states and similar to Non-Expert pilots regarding physiological patterns. Overall, high interindividual variability of these results highlight the complex link between physiological and psychological parameters with workload, and question whether physiology alone could predict a pilot's inability to make the right decision at the right time.

Bad and worse: neural systems underlying reappraisal of high- and low-intensity negative emotions

One of the most effective strategies for regulating emotional responses is cognitive reappraisal. While prior work has made great strides in characterizing reappraisal's neural mechanisms and behavioral outcomes, the key issue of how regulation varies as a function of emotional intensity remains unaddressed. We compared the behavioral and neural correlates of reappraisal of high- and low-intensity emotional responses using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We found that successful reappraisal of both high- and low-intensity emotions depends upon recruitment of dorsomedial (dmPFC) as well as left dorsolateral (dlPFC) and ventrolateral (vlPFC) prefrontal cortex. However, reappraisal of high-intensity emotions more strongly activated left dlPFC, and in addition, activated right lateral and dorsomedial PFC regions not recruited by low-intensity reappraisal. No brain regions were more strongly recruited during reappraisal of low when compared with high-intensity emotions. Taken together, these results suggest that reappraisal of high-intensity emotion requires greater cognitive resources as evidenced by quantitative and qualitative differences in prefrontal recruitment. These data have implications for understanding how and when specific PFC systems are needed to regulate different types of emotional responses.

Recognition of facial and vocal affect following traumatic brain injury

Objective: Studies of facial affect recognition by people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) have shown this to be a significant problem. Vocal affect recognition also appears to be challenging for this population, but little is known about the degree to which one modality is impaired compared to the other. This study compared facial and vocal affect recognition of high and low intensity emotion expressions in people with moderate-to-severe TBI.Methods: The Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy-2 (Adult Faces; Voices) was administered to 203 participants with TBI.Results: Adults with TBI identified vocal emotion expressions with greater accuracy than facial emotion expressions. Facial affect recognition impairment was identified in 34% of participants, 22% were classified as having vocal affect recognition impairment and 15% showed impairment in both modalities. Participants were significantly less accurate at identifying low vs high intensity emotion expressions in both modalities. Happy facial expressions were significantly better identified than all other emotions. Errors were distributed across the emotion categories for vocal expressions.Conclusions: The degree of facial affect impairment was significantly greater than vocal affect impairment in this sample of people with moderate-to-severe TBI. Low intensity emotion expressions were particularly problematic and an advantage for positively valenced facial emotion expressions was indicated.

On the dynamics of implicit emotion regulation: Counter-regulation after remembering events of high but not of low emotional intensity

Valence biases in attention allocation were assessed after remembering positive or negative personal events that were either still emotionally hot or to which the person had already adapted psychologically. Differences regarding the current state of psychological adjustment were manipulated experimentally by instructing participants to recall distant vs. recent events (Experiment 1) or affectively hot events vs. events to which the person had accommodated already (Experiment 2). Valence biases in affective processing were measured with a valence search task. Processes of emotional counter-regulation (i.e., attention allocation to stimuli of opposite valence to the emotional event) were elicited by remembering affectively hot events, whereas congruency effects (i.e., attention allocation to stimuli of the same valence as the emotional event) were obtained for events for which a final appraisal had already been established. The results of our study help to resolve conflicting findings from the literature regarding congruent vs. incongruent effects of remembering emotional events on affective processing. We discuss implications of our findings for the conception of emotions and for the dynamics of emotion regulation processes.

Accuracy in non-verbal emotional processing in children of parents diagnosed with bipolar disorder – preliminary results

Background: Children of parents diagnosed with bipolar disorder are at greater risk of developing bipolar disorder as well other axis I conditions. This increased risk is associated with deficits in frontal top-down regulatory pathways, involved with emotional processing and regulation. Previous research has also shown that depressive and anxiety-related symptoms in children at-risk have been linked to greater likelihood of developing bipolar disorder later on. Better understanding the deficits involved in this pathway during the progression of the disorder will help further our understanding of risk and the core psychopathology underlying bipolar disorder. The goal of our study is to compare performance during a nonverbal emotional labeling task between symptomatic high-risk bipolar offspring and children of healthy control parents. Methods: We plan to compare a total of 45 high-risk bipolar offspring with 15 healthy control participants during the well-validated Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy (DANVA) task. To date, 14 high-risk partially-affected offspring (average age = 13.7(2.9) years, 6 females) and 12 healthy control offspring (average age = 13.2(2.7) years, 8 females) have participated. Overall accuracy and type of error, including intensity and emotion, have been compared between groups using Mann-Whitney U tests. Similarly, we performed a secondary analysis using diagnosis of depression and anxiety-related disorders in high-risk offspring to compare performance on this task using Kruskal-Wallis rank sum test. Results: High-risk offspring were shown to have significant increase in total number of errors on both child and adult face subsections of the DANVA (p b 0.0001 for both). High-risk offspring performed worse when the emotional intensity of the face shown was low for both child and adult faces and interestingly, for high intensity faces in adults. High-risk offspring were also more likely to inaccurately label angry faces as well as fearful adult faces. During a secondary analysis, we compared high-risk offspring with depression (n = 7), anxiety-related disorders (n = 6) and healthy controls (n = 12) and found the labeling accuracy difference between the three groups during the identification of low intensity emotion in adult faces (p = 0.04) as well as when adults faces were expressing anger (p = 0.008). Conclusions: Our results provide further evidence that the DANVA can be used to examine the emotional labeling deficits in offspring at high risk to develop bipolar disorder. Such deficits may be part of the core psychopathology in bipolar disorder.

Social anxiety is associated with general but not specific biases in emotion recognition

Misreading facial expressions as signals of social disapproval, such as anger and disgust, may maintain social anxiety. If so, manipulating face processing could be therapeutic. It remains unclear, however, whether socially anxious individuals are in fact more sensitive to disapproving emotions. We assessed decoding of, and cost attributions to, emotional expressions in high and low socially anxious females (n=102) using five emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness) expressed at 15 intensities (9–65%), providing 75 stimuli (see Supplementary Material). The decoding task briefly presented the stimuli and participants identified the emotion. The cost attribution task asked individuals to rate each stimulus for how costly it would be for them to interact with the person. Random effects regression indicated that social anxiety was not associated with overall decoding accuracy but was associated with a response bias. High socially anxious individuals had a lower threshold for decoding emotions but also more frequently classified low intensity emotions incorrectly. These effects were not emotion-specific. Socially anxious individuals also attributed excessive social cost to expressions of negative valence. Our results provide a novel conceptual framework for understanding emotion decoding in social anxiety, indicating the importance of considering both accuracy and response bias.

“Who Said That?” Matching of Low- and High-Intensity Emotional Prosody to Facial Expressions by Adolescents with ASD

Data on emotion processing by individuals with ASD suggest both intact abilities and significant deficits. Signal intensity may be a contributing factor to this discrepancy. We presented low- and high-intensity emotional stimuli in a face-voice matching task to 22 adolescents with ASD and 22 typically developing (TD) peers. Participants heard semantically neutral sentences with happy, surprised, angry, and sad prosody presented at two intensity levels (low, high) and matched them to emotional faces. The facial expression choice was either across- or within-valence. Both groups were less accurate for low-intensity emotions, but the ASD participants' accuracy levels dropped off more sharply. ASD participants were significantly less accurate than their TD peers for trials involving low-intensity emotions and within-valence face contrasts.

Book Review: The Geopolitics of Representation in Foreign News: Explaining Darfur

The Geopolitics of Representation in Foreign News: Explaining Darfur. Bella Mody. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010. 478 pp. $100 hbk. $44.95 pbk.Bella Mody's cross-national study of news media reporting of the Darfur crisis is among the most extensive and complex of its kind. Mody is James de Castro Chair in Global Media Studies in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The book is the collaborative outcome of an endeavor spearheaded by Mody that also involved several of her graduate students.The study investigated coverage of the Darfur crisis by ten news organizations over twenty-six months. The organizations were the New York Times, the Washington Post, Le Monde, the Guardian, Al-Ahram, People's Daily, China Daily, BBC.co.uk, English. AlJazeera.Net, and Mail & Guardian Online. The range includes some that are based in the global North, some in the South, a mixture of privately owned and state owned, some oriented to national audiences and others aimed at foreign audiences. Some are print, some online. The organizations differ in the extent to which their countries of location had historical geopolitical affiliation with Sudan or current national interests.The study draws on a total sample of 1,198 articles from the ten media, published during the first twenty-six months of the crisis (January 2003 to February 2005). Among other variables, each article was analyzed for its focal frame or dominant focus. Frames included causes (historical and contemporary), conduct (nature, status, process, and conduct of the crisis), and remedies. Headlines and text were also analyzed for the presence of three keywords: ethnic-race terms, genocide, and oil/ petroleum. Coders rated the emotional intensity of articles as high, medium, or low. Following extensive literature review and background on the Darfur crisis, the book is organized by a series of comparative analyses of different pairs of news organizations representing China's state-owned English- and Chinese-Language newspapers (China Daily and People's Daily); South Africa's Mail and Guardian Online with the Egyptian Al-Ahram; UK's Guardian with France's Le Monde; the New York Times with the Washington Post; and the websites of the BBC and Al Jazeera.The study confirms many long-standing criticisms of the performance of news media. While news representations of cross-national foreign events were most noticeable for their diversity of lenses and foci, one noticeable similarity was the relative neglect of the causes of the crisis. Otherwise, coverage was influenced by the national locations and characteristics of news organizations. Perhaps disappointingly for those who hoped for convincing evidence of improvement in North-South performance since the 1970s' NWICO debates, coverage by media of the global North proved strongest in several respects. This was surely related to the superior resources available to those organizations, but many other factors were at play. Locational standpoint matters, says Mody. Each news organization was embedded in a distinct geopolitical context that shaped its news representations.The study constructed a multilevel measure for level of press attention. Le Monde, BBC.co.uk, and the New York Times gave most attention to Darfur. News organizations located in China and Egypt, with a high national interest in Sudan's oil, trade, and water, produced mostly news articles of low emotional intensity. …

Secrets and Lies: Involuntary Leakage in Deceptive Facial Expressions as a Function of Emotional Intensity

Darwin (1872) hypothesized that some facial muscle actions associated with emotion cannot be consciously inhibited, particularly when the to-be concealed emotion is strong. The present study investigated emotional “leakage” in deceptive facial expressions as a function of emotional intensity. Participants viewed low or high intensity disgusting, sad, frightening, and happy images, responding to each with a 5 s videotaped genuine or deceptive expression. Each 1/30 s frame of the 1,711 expressions (256,650 frames in total) was analyzed for the presence and duration of universal expressions. Results strongly supported the inhibition hypothesis. In general, emotional leakage lasted longer in both the upper and lower face during high-intensity masked, relative to low-intensity, masked expressions. High intensity emotion was more difficult to conceal than low intensity emotion during emotional neutralization, leading to a greater likelihood of emotional leakage in the upper face. The greatest and least amount of emotional leakage occurred during fearful and happiness expressions, respectively. Untrained observers were unable to discriminate real and false expressions above the level of chance.

It's the Recipient That Counts: Spending Money on Strong Social Ties Leads to Greater Happiness than Spending on Weak Social Ties

Previous research has shown that spending money on others (prosocial spending) increases happiness. But, do the happiness gains depend on who the money is spent on? Sociologists have distinguished between strong ties with close friends and family and weak ties—relationships characterized by less frequent contact, lower emotional intensity, and limited intimacy. We randomly assigned participants to reflect on a time when they spent money on either a strong social tie or a weak social tie. Participants reported higher levels of positive affect after recalling a time they spent on a strong tie versus a weak tie. The level of intimacy in the relationship was more important than the type of relationship; there was no significant difference in positive affect after recalling spending money on a family member instead of a friend. These results add to the growing literature examining the factors that moderate the link between prosocial behaviour and happiness.

Intensity-dependent facial emotion recognition and cognitive functions in Parkinson’s disease

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) frequently display non-motor symptoms. In this study, we investigated intensity-dependent facial emotion recognition in patients with PD and healthy controls (HC), matched for age, gender, and education, and its relationship to individual cognitive domains. Seventy patients with PD and 70 HC were submitted to a clinical, neuropsychological, and psychopathological evaluation. Facial emotion recognition performance was assessed using the Penn Emotion Recognition Test (PERT). The patients with PD recognized fewer low- and high-intensity facial expressions of disgust than HC. This effect was selective, because their global ability to recognize emotions was intact. Both patients with PD and HC recognized high-intensity better than low-intensity emotions, except for disgust, which was recognized better at low intensity. In the patients with PD, overall facial emotion recognition and selective disgust recognition performances were related to deficits in many neuropsychological domains (verbal and visuo-spatial memory, attention, praxis, and verbal fluency). The ability to recognize emotions is a complex cognitive process requiring the integrity of several functions. Therefore, it is likely that structural or functional derangement of the discrete neural pathways involved in these cognitive functions in patients with PD makes it difficult for them to recognize emotions expressed by others.

Motion contributes to the interpretation of emotional facial expressions

Most research on expression recognition uses still photographs of high emotional intensity expressions, whereas in real life expressions tend to be dynamic and of low emotional intensity. The present study uses photorealistic 3-D animated images of ecologically valid expressions (Spencer-Smith, et. al., 2000) in a seven-alternative forced choice task. We demonstrate that very low emotional intensity expressions are accurately identified when presented in a dynamic fashion, while accuracy with static displays are near chance. Additionally, sad expressions are identified either as sad or happy depending on the direction of presentation (increasing or decreasing emotional intensity). In two experiments, participants viewed pairs of images of low emotional intensity expressions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise) presented serially in three display conditions. In the first condition, stimuli were presented in the order lower intensity→lightly higher intensity, resulting in apparent motion in the direction of increasing emotional intensity. In the second condition, intervening noise resulted in the perception of two static images; in the third, the stimuli were presented in decreasing order. Accuracies in the first condition approached those found for high emotional intensity static images in previous studies, while in the remaining condition accuracies were near chance. Sad expressions presented in the reverse order were identified as happy.

Linguistic Markers and Emotional Intensity

The purpose of this experiment is to explore possible relationships between the intensity of emotions and the lexical modalities for expressing those emotions. In this experiment, 60 Hebrew-speaking subjects were asked to watch four short films that aroused emotion. Two of the films gave rise to different degrees of happiness, and two produced sadness. At the end of each film, subjects were asked to report on their emotions. This experiment was based on the supposition that there is a relationship between the various lexical modalities used by the subjects when writing about their emotions and the intensity of those emotions. The lexical modalities examined included intensifiers, the use of emotion words, repetitions, the use of first person singular, the use of metaphors, and the use of exclamations, among others. This experiment supported the research hypothesis, as it confirmed that significant differences existed between the lexical modalities found in texts written with lower emotional intensity (for both happiness and sadness) and those written with greater emotional intensity.

INTERDEPENDENT SELF-CONSTRUAL, COMPETITIVE ATTITUDES, CULTURE AND EMOTIONAL REACTIONS ON SADNESS

Two studies analyzed the relationship between interdependent self-construal, competitive attitudes, emotional expression, coping, and subjective emotional reaction on sadness. This article reports the research carried out in 29 countries. These studies replicate previous research showing that people living in collectivist and high power distance contexts report low verbal expression, and low emotional intensity. Participants sharing collectivist self-construal and competitive attitudes reported more secondary coping (that is, self-modification or suppression reactions). However, only competitive attitudes were related to low verbal emotional expression and low subjective reactions. Participants answered questions related to a typical person and for their personal experience. Results suggest that cultural feelings and display norms can explain the stoical emotional personal style, since actual self-reported and general emotional knowledge patterns were similar. However, the association between coping and subjective reactions was stronger in the personal experience condition, suggesting that internal processes depend on norms less than open verbal behavior.

Directed forgetting of autobiographical events

Two diary experiments demonstrated directed forgetting (DF) of autobiographical events, previously observed only for less complex memory items. Using a 2-week diary paradigm, we compared recall between a group of participants who were directed to forget Week 1 memories (forget group) and a group who did not receive a forget instruction (remember group). In Experiment 1, the forget group remembered fewer items from Week 1 than did the remember group. The effect was observed for negative and positive valence events, as well as for high and low emotional intensity events. The effect was replicated in Experiment 2 despite a memorable holiday (Valentine's Day) that occurred during the manipulation week. Forget participants remembered fewer low emotional intensity items in Experiment 2. We conclude that intentional forgetting is a plausible explanation for the loss of some autobiographical memories.

Intensity and color of language in attitude change and emotion.

This study examined whether messages using or not using emotionally intense language combined with certain colors, i.e., red, white, or blue, to effect attitude change. Emotionally intense messages were more positively associated with attitude change than were those with low emotional intensity, but no interaction effects or main effects for color were found.