The Emerging Science of People-Watching:Forming Impressions From Third-Party Encounters

Traditional impression formation studies have focused almost exclusively on the perception and evaluation of isolated individuals. In recent years, however, portrayals of third-party encounters between two (or more) people have been used increasingly often to probe impressions about the interactions and relations between individuals. This tacit paradigm change has revealed an intriguing scope of judgments that concern how and why people relate to one another. Though these judgments recruit well-known neural networks of impression formation, their underlying cognitive operations and functional significance remain largely speculative. By providing an overview of recent theoretical and empirical approaches on encounter-based impressions, this article highlights their prevalent role in human social cognition. </jats:p

Biased facial emotion perception in mental health disorders:a possible target for psychological intervention?

Our perception of emotion in the faces of others affects our own behavior and mood. Indeed, individuals with mood disorders such as depression and aggression often show biases in facial-emotion perception. Here, we review recent and ongoing research suggesting that biased emotion perception may be on the causal pathway of the onset and maintenance of mood disorders, and hence a potential target for intervention. Simple cognitive-bias modification tasks that change participants’ perception of facial expressions of emotion have shown some promise as a therapeutic technique. We outline further directions for continued research investigating the robustness and clinical impact of emotion-bias modification in real-world settings. </jats:p

Cross-cultural effects of color, but not morphological masculinity, on perceived attractiveness of men's faces

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2012 ElsevierMuch attractiveness research has focused on face shape. The role of masculinity (which for adults is thought to be a relatively stable shape cue to developmental testosterone levels) in male facial attractiveness has been examined, with mixed results. Recent work on the perception of skin color (a more variable cue to current health status) indicates that increased skin redness, yellowness, and lightness enhance apparent health. It has been suggested that stable cues such as masculinity may be less important to attractiveness judgments than short-term, more variable health cues. We examined associations between male facial attractiveness, masculinity, and skin color in African and Caucasian populations. Masculinity was not found to be associated with attractiveness in either ethnic group. However, skin color was found to be an important predictor of attractiveness judgments, particularly for own-ethnicity faces. Our results suggest that more plastic health cues, such as skin color, are more important than developmental cues such as masculinity. Further, unfamiliarity with natural skin color variation in other ethnic groups may limit observers' ability to utilize these color cues

The enigma of facial asymmetry:is there a gender specific pattern of facedness?

Although facial symmetry correlates with facial attractiveness, human faces are often far from symmetrical with one side frequently being larger than the other (Kowner, 1998). Smith (2000) reported that male and female faces were asymmetrical in opposite directions, with males having a larger area on the left side compared to the right side, and females having a larger right side compared to the left side. The present study attempted to replicate and extend this finding. Two databases of facial images from Stirling and St Andrews Universities, consisting of 180 and 122 faces respectively, and a third set of 62 faces collected at Abertay University, were used to examine Smith's findings. Smith's unique method of calculating the size of each hemiface was applied to each set. For the Stirling and St Andrews sets a computer program did this automatically and for the Abertay set it was done manually. No significant overall effect of gender on facial area asymmetry was found. However, the St Andrews sample demonstrated a similar effect to that found by Smith, with females having a significantly larger mean area of right hemiface and males having a larger left hemiface. In addition, for the Abertay faces handedness had a significant effect on facial asymmetry with right-handers having a larger left side of the face. These findings give limited support for Smith's results but also suggest that finding such an asymmetry may depend on some as yet unidentified factors inherent in some methods of image collection

Feedback training induces a bias for detecting happiness or fear in facial expressions that generalises to a novel task

AbstractMany psychological disorders are characterised by insensitivities or biases in the processing of subtle facial expressions of emotion. Training using expression morph sequences which vary the intensity of expressions may be able to address such deficits. In the current study participants were shown expressions from either happy or fearful intensity morph sequences, and trained to detect the target emotion (e.g., happy in the happy sequence) as being present in low intensity expressions. Training transfer was tested using a six alternative forced choice emotion labelling task with varying intensity expressions, which participants completed before and after training. Training increased false alarms for the target emotion in the transfer task. Hit rate for the target emotion did not increase once adjustment was made for the increase in false alarms. This suggests that training causes a bias for detecting the target emotion which generalises outside of the training task. However it does not increase accuracy for detecting the target emotion. The results are discussed in terms of the training’s utility in addressing different types of emotion processing deficits in psychological disorders

The Role of State and Trait Anxiety in the Processing of Facial Expressions of Emotion

State anxiety appears to influence facial emotion processing (Attwood et al. 2017 R. Soc. Open Sci. 4, 160855). We aimed to (i) replicate these findings and (ii) investigate the role of trait anxiety, in an experiment with healthy UK participants (N = 48, 50% male, 50% high trait anxiety). High and low state anxiety were induced via inhalations of 7.5% carbon dioxide enriched air and medical air, respectively. High state anxiety reduced global emotion recognition accuracy (p = 0.01, [Formula: see text]), but it did not affect interpretation bias towards perceiving anger in ambiguous angry–happy facial morphs (p = 0.18, [Formula: see text]). We found no clear evidence of a relationship between trait anxiety and global emotion recognition accuracy (p = 0.60, [Formula: see text]) or interpretation bias towards perceiving anger (p = 0.83, [Formula: see text]). However, there was greater interpretation bias towards perceiving anger (i.e. away from happiness) during heightened state anxiety, among individuals with high trait anxiety (p = 0.03, dz = 0.33). State anxiety appears to impair emotion recognition accuracy, and among individuals with high trait anxiety, it appears to increase biases towards perceiving anger (away from happiness). Trait anxiety alone does not appear to be associated with facial emotion processing

Effects of emotion recognition training on mood among individuals with high levels of depressive symptoms: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: We have developed a new paradigm that targets the recognition of facial expression of emotions. Here we report the protocol of a randomised controlled trial of the effects of emotion recognition training on mood in a sample of individuals with depressive symptoms over a 6-week follow-up period. METHODS/DESIGN: We will recruit 190 adults from the general population who report high levels of depressive symptoms (defined as a score ≥ 14 on the Beck Depression Inventory-II). Participants will attend a screening session and will be randomised to intervention or control procedures, repeated five times over consecutive days (Monday to Friday). A follow-up session will take place at end-of -treatment, 2-weeks and 6-weeks after training. Our primary study outcome will be depressive symptoms, Beck Depression Inventory- II (rated over the past two weeks). Our secondary outcomes are: depressive symptoms, Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression; anxiety symptoms, Beck Anxiety Inventory (rated over the past month); positive affect, Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (rated as 'how you feel right now'); negative affect, Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (rated as 'how you feel right now'); emotion sensitivity, Emotion Recognition Task (test phase); approach motivation and persistence, the Fishing Game; and depressive interpretation bias, Scrambled Sentences Test. DISCUSSION: This study is of a novel cognitive bias modification technique that targets biases in emotional processing characteristic of depression, and can be delivered automatically via computer, Internet or Smartphone. It therefore has potential to be a valuable cost-effective adjunctive treatment for depression which may be used together with more traditional psychotherapy, cognitive-behavioural therapy and pharmacotherapy. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Current Controlled Trials: ISRCTN17767674.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are