Dataset Information

When action meets emotions: how facial displays of emotion influence goal-related behavior.

ABSTRACT: Many authors have proposed that facial expressions, by conveying emotional states of the person we are interacting with, influence the interaction behavior. We aimed at verifying how specific the effect is of the facial expressions of emotions of an individual (both their valence and relevance/specificity for the purpose of the action) with respect to how the action aimed at the same individual is executed. In addition, we investigated whether and how the effects of emotions on action execution are modulated by participants' empathic attitudes. We used a kinematic approach to analyze the simulation of feeding others, which consisted of recording the "feeding trajectory" by using a computer mouse. Actors could express different highly arousing emotions, namely happiness, disgust, anger, or a neutral expression. Response time was sensitive to the interaction between valence and relevance/specificity of emotion: disgust caused faster response. In addition, happiness induced slower feeding time and longer time to peak velocity, but only in blocks where it alternated with expressions of disgust. The kinematic profiles described how the effect of the specificity of the emotional context for feeding, namely a modulation of accuracy requirements, occurs. An early acceleration in kinematic relative-to-neutral feeding profiles occurred when actors expressed positive emotions (happiness) in blocks with specific-to-feeding negative emotions (disgust). On the other hand, the end-part of the action was slower when feeding happy with respect to neutral faces, confirming the increase of accuracy requirements and motor control. These kinematic effects were modulated by participants' empathic attitudes. In conclusion, the social dimension of emotions, that is, their ability to modulate others' action planning/execution, strictly depends on their relevance and specificity to the purpose of the action. This finding argues against a strict distinction between social and nonsocial emotions.

SUBMITTER: Ferri F

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2948517 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

When action meets emotions: how facial displays of emotion influence goal-related behavior.

Ferri Francesca F Stoianov Ivilin Peev IP Gianelli Claudia C D'Amico Luigi L Borghi Anna M AM Gallese Vittorio V

PloS one 20101001 10

Many authors have proposed that facial expressions, by conveying emotional states of the person we are interacting with, influence the interaction behavior. We aimed at verifying how specific the effect is of the facial expressions of emotions of an individual (both their valence and relevance/specificity for the purpose of the action) with respect to how the action aimed at the same individual is executed. In addition, we investigated whether and how the effects of emotions on action execution ...[more]

PMID: 20957204

Similar Datasets

Project description:Folk psychology advocates the existence of gender differences in socio-cognitive functions such as 'reading' the mental states of others or discerning subtle differences in body-language. A female advantage has been demonstrated for emotion recognition from facial expressions, but virtually nothing is known about gender differences in recognizing bodily stimuli or body language. The aim of the present study was to investigate potential gender differences in a series of tasks, involving the recognition of distinct features from point light displays (PLDs) depicting bodily movements of a male and female actor. Although recognition scores were considerably high at the overall group level, female participants were more accurate than males in recognizing the depicted actions from PLDs. Response times were significantly higher for males compared to females on PLD recognition tasks involving (i) the general recognition of 'biological motion' versus 'non-biological' (or 'scrambled' motion); or (ii) the recognition of the 'emotional state' of the PLD-figures. No gender differences were revealed for a control test (involving the identification of a color change in one of the dots) and for recognizing the gender of the PLD-figure. In addition, previous findings of a female advantage on a facial emotion recognition test (the 'Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test' (Baron-Cohen, 2001)) were replicated in this study. Interestingly, a strong correlation was revealed between emotion recognition from bodily PLDs versus facial cues. This relationship indicates that inter-individual or gender-dependent differences in recognizing emotions are relatively generalized across facial and bodily emotion perception. Moreover, the tight correlation between a subject's ability to discern subtle emotional cues from PLDs and the subject's ability to basically discriminate biological from non-biological motion provides indications that differences in emotion recognition may - at least to some degree - be related to more basic differences in processing biological motion per se.

Dataset Information

When action meets emotions: how facial displays of emotion influence goal-related behavior.

Publications

When action meets emotions: how facial displays of emotion influence goal-related behavior.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets