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Web End = Motiv Emot (2016) 40:309320 DOI 10.1007/s11031-015-9528-4
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Web End = Empathy, emotion dysregulation, and enhanced microexpression recognition ability
Elena Svetieva1,2 Mark G. Frank1
Published online: 9 December 2015 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015
Abstract The present study examined empathy and emotion dysregulation, two individual traits related to the perception and experience of others emotions, and the recognition of both spontaneous and standardized microexpressions of emotion. Ninety-three participants viewed a stimulus set of natural (spontaneous) microexpressions in addition to completing a standardized test of microexpression recognition ability, as well as completing questionnaires on empathy and emotion dysregulation. Results indicate that emotion dysregulation is associated with enhanced microexpression recognition, particularly recognition of anger microexpressions, but that this enhanced recognition was only observed for standardized microexpressions. Empathy was associated with increased recognition of anger microexpressions in the natural stimulus set only, and was not associated with overall microexpression recognition accuracy in either the natural stimulus set or the standardized test. The present ndings inform understanding of intrapersonal affective traits in subtle emotion recognition, and theoretical and practical implications are discussed in both clinical and deception detection contexts.
Keywords Microexpression recognition Emotion
dysregulation Empathy Emotion expression recognition
Introduction
A typical human expression of emotion is stated to last between .5 s and 4 s (Ekman 2007; Hess and Kleck 1990). However, there has been increasing interest in expressions of emotion that are much briefer. First documented by Haggard and Isaacs (1966), these emotion expressions have since been termed microexpressions, and have been documented to appear on the human face for less than 1/2 s (Ekman and Friesen 1969). Microexpressions are thought to be a by-product of both the voluntary and involuntary mechanisms of emotion expression in humans, where the individuals desire to control the expression of a certain emotion is compromised by the involuntary impulse that emanates from emotion centers in the brain to express that very emotion (Frank and Svetieva 2015). For this reason, microexpressions are thought to occur more frequently when individuals are deceiving. The focus on microexpressions...