1,721,012 research outputs found
Domestic dogs' understanding of human emotional cues
Full text linkPast research has focused on the ability of domestic dogs to recognise human communicative cues such as human pointing, eye gaze, attachment behaviour, social learning, and responses to affective stimuli. However, there is still much to be learned about dogs’ ability to recognise human emotions. The main objective of this study was to investigate whether domestic dogs understood the emotions expressed by a human experimenter. I examined four emotions (anger, sadness, fear, happiness) and three types of expressions (dynamic, unimodal, bimodal) in four studies. The four studies covered the following: (1) dogs’ response to commands accompanied by dynamic expressions of human happiness and anger; (2) dogs’ social referencing of human expressions of fear and happiness, and one control “confused” expression; (3) dogs’ and human infants’ preferential looking to angry, happy and sad human faces when listening to a matching emotion voice. In addition, infants’ facial expressions were analysed to examine whether their facial expressions differed as a result of the affective displays they viewed, and one additional control experiment was conducted to examine dogs’ ability to perform gender-matching of human faces to voices, and (4) dogs’ and young adult humans’ physiological (cortisol levels) and behavioural response to human infant crying, human infant babbling, and white noise. In Study 1, I found that dogs have differential responses to the experimenter’s happy and angry expressions emanating from the body, face or voice cues during the emoting phase, but not when left alone with food. In Study 2, dogs responded differentially to happiness and fearful expressions, but had similar responses to both fearful and control conditions, suggesting that they might not have understood the fearful expression meaningfully. Results from Study 3 showed that both dogs and infants looked less at sad faces (irrespective of the matching voice), and had no preference for looking at either happy or angry faces. Also, infants displayed a sad expression when viewing a sad face. For the gender-matching task, dogs were able to match male faces to voices, but not for female stimuli. Finally in Study 4, I found that both dogs and humans had increased cortisol levels after listening to a human infant crying but not to babbling or white noise. Dogs also showed a combination of alert and submissive behaviour when listening to crying. In conclusion, the results provided some evidence that dogs tended to respond differently to human emotional expressions and, similar to humans, may have an aversion to human expressions of sadness, indicating the presence of emotional contagion, a form of rudimentary empathy
A Comparative Analysis of Emotion Recognition: Young Versus Older Adults Across Gender and Cultures
Full text linkThe purpose of this research was to investigate emotion recognition in adults across age, gender and culture. Using the six basic emotions of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise as stimuli, the aim is to examine whether men and women benefit differently from eye and mouth gazing. Comparisons will be made, first, between male and female participants, second, between young and older adults and third, between Europeans and South-east Asian Chinese. The dependent measure will be correct responses to emotion recognition items. Six basic emotions were shown to 108 young adults (M20 years) and 109 older adults (M70 years) from European and Asian Chinese descent. The two-part experiment which consisted of a web-based survey and the use of an eye-tracker, was conducted in New Zealand (NZ) and Singapore (SG) with facilities provided by the Psychology departments of the University of Otago and the National University of Singapore respectively. I found age-related deficits across cultures and disparity in emotion recognition with NZ Europeans participants outperforming their south-east Asian Chinese counterparts in all emotion recognition tasks. While older women benefitted more from nose gazing, older men’s mouth gazing was associated with worse emotion recognition. In addition, higher depression and loneliness, and lower well-being correlated with worse emotion recognition for younger adults
The Role of Empathy and Emotion Recognition in Prejudice and Right-Wing Authoritarianism in Older Adults
No full textResearch suggests that older adults are higher in racial prejudice and Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) than younger adults, and that these differences may be attributable to executive functioning deficits. However, ageing also brings changes in social cognitive functioning, including empathy and emotion recognition, and the role of these factors in older adults’ social attitudes has not been sufficiently explored. In this thesis, I examined executive functioning, empathy, emotion recognition, prejudice toward Asians, and RWA in older and younger adults. Older adults were significantly lower in explicit prejudice and higher in RWA than younger adults. Using regression analyses, I found that age differences in explicit prejudice were not independent of emotion recognition, and age differences in RWA were not independent of executive functioning. Within-groups analyses showed that empathy, executive functioning, and emotion recognition did not relate to prejudice or RWA in younger adults. In older adults, emotion recognition and empathy predicted explicit prejudice, perspective-taking predicted implicit prejudice, and emotion recognition and executive functioning predicted RWA. The effect of emotion recognition on RWA in older adults was independent of feelings of threat and anxiety toward the outgroup, but the effect of emotion recognition on explicit prejudice was not. This suggests that emotion recognition difficulties in older adults lead to greater feelings of threat and greater expression of prejudice, and also may lead to difficulty understanding that extreme right-wing attitudes are offensive to others
Social Understanding in the Community: Establishing Links to Previous Family Issues as well as an Understanding of Mental States on Disadvantaged Adolescents
Full text linkObjective
The purpose of the present study was to assess links to previous familial issues as well as an understanding of mental states on disadvantaged adolescents while controlling for age, fluid intelligence, and verbal ability. The other objective was to compare atypical adolescents to typical counterparts about general reasoning and social understanding.
Method
Participants included 50 individuals who had experienced previous maltreatment (physical abuse/ neglect) aged 9 to 26 years-old and 90 university students (typical) aged 18 - 33 years-old. Participants completed fluid intelligence task (Raven Progress Matrices), vocabulary task (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test), Emotion Faces Task, Eye task, Point Light Tasks (emotion and action), and Mr Bean Task.
Result
Results of multivariate analysis of covariance of both groups indicated that the atypical group was not generally worse than the typical group on the tasks tapping social understanding; they were better on two tasks and worse on one task. The partial correlation analyses performed only on the atypical group indicated that the correlations were inconsistent in indicating that emotional/physical abuse was associated with both correct and incorrect responding to Mr Bean mental state task.
Conclusions
The findings suggest the complexity of the relation between social understanding and wellbeing variables, in that the maltreated youth would do well on one task and poorly on another. These findings suggest the unpredictability in maltreated individuals’ reading of others’ mental states and the possibility that social understanding improves in abused youth over time
The Ubiquitous Decline or Paradox of Aging: Young and Older Adults' Differences in Emotion Reactivity, Recognition and Regulation
No full textThe aging literature indicates that physical, cognitive and affective functions follow different trajectories across the lifespan. Physical and cognitive capabilities are shown to decline with advancing age, whereas affective functioning is suggested to remain stable or may even be enhanced in older adults. The main aim of the present thesis is to examine age differences in emotion reactivity, recognition and regulation. The inter-relationships among emotion reactivity, recognition and regulation were also assessed to provide a more complete picture of potentially different age trajectories of emotion processes. In addition, the effects of potential moderators, namely emotion intelligence and loneliness, on age differences in emotion reactivity were examined.
In Study I, a standardised set of film stimuli was developed and validated. Forty-eight participants (24 young and 24 older adults) participated in the stimulus validation study. The chosen film stimuli were shown to be effective in eliciting target emotions in a laboratory setting. No significant age and sex differences were observed, and prior viewing of the film was shown to have no significant impact on participants’ self-reported emotion experience.
In Study II, young-old differences in emotion reactivity, recognition and regulation as well as the inter-relationships among these affective functions were of interest. In addition, age-related decline in heart rates and skin conductance levels in response to affective film stimuli were observed. Older adults were significantly worse at recognising facial expressions of sadness and anger, and marginally worse at recognising facial expressions of fear. Older adults reported more habitual use of expressive suppression than their younger counterparts, while no age difference was found for cognitive reappraisal use. Emotion intelligence did not buffer against age-related decline in emotion reactivity.
Finally, in Study III, I aimed to replicate the findings of Study II, as well as extend Study II by including facial electromyography as another index of emotion reactivity. I also employed emotion recognition tasks that are more complex and tap into other sensory modalities. Again, age-related decline in heart rates and skin conductance was observed. Young adults displayed significantly greater corrugator activity in response to fear-provoking film clips, but no significant age difference was found for corrugator activity in response to the anger and sadness-provoking film clips. Young and older adults also displayed comparable level of zygomatic facial activity when presented with the amusing film clip. Older adults were worse at recognising angry and fearful facial affect. As for the face-voice and body-voice matching tasks, older adults were worse at recognising all emotions except for surprise. Older adults also reported more habitual use of expressive suppression, and that was shown to affect emotion recognition performance.
Taken together, these studies indicate that different components of affective functions are differentially affected by normal adult aging. Implications for competing perspectives of socioemotional functioning in older adults as well as suggestions for positive aging are provided
Deception Detection: Where do I look, Upper Face or Lower Face?
No full textHuman’s ability to detect deception has an unsettling result of around chance detection (Depaulo et al., 2003; Bond & DePaulo, 2008). Both Experiment 1 and 2 tracked participant’s eye fixations during the process of detecting a lie. Participants were asked to make veracity judgements of people telling the truth or a lie (Ruffman et al., 2012), while their eye fixations were being recorded. Experiment 1 Results: During the deception detection, undergraduates made greater proportion of fixations to the upper face. However, it was increases in lower face looking that correlated with accuracy of deception detection. Undergraduates could have been using deceptions located in the lower face, of discomfort, tensions, negative expressions (Ruffman et al., unpublished). Experiment 2 assessed whether similar accuracy would be obtained, if sound were removed. Experiment 2 Results: The removal of auditory information severely impaired their ability to detect deception to around chance, however their eye gaze behaviour differed when looking at truth from lie videos. This is, while participants were not consciously able to detect deception, sub-consciously they are perceiving a difference between the truth and lie videos. Furthermore, in both experiments participants fixated proportionately more in the truth condition. The combination of results from Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 does show that the detection of older adult (60+) lies and truths were greatly affected by auditory information. In such that the removal of auditory information significantly impaired the detection of their lies by undergraduates students
Parental impact on child prejudice in New Zealand
No full textResearch to date has shown mixed results that prejudice against out-group individuals may be explained through parent and child relationships and the attitudes held within. Some theorists suggest that children develop negative out-group attitudes through facets not relating to parents (Clark, Hocevar, & Dembo, 1980; Dunham, Baron & Banaji, 2008; Nesdale, 2004; 2008; Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Clark, Hocevar, and Dembo 1980; Nesdale, 2004; 2008, Dunham et al., 2008), while others suggest a highly influential relationship (Allport, 1954; Bar-Tal & Teichman, 2005; Dalhouse & Frideres, 1996; Bar-Tal & Teichman, 2005; Degner & Dalege, 2013). Much of the research in this area has also been completed in North American contexts, focusing solely on the relationship between Caucasians and African Americans (Black-Gutman & Hickson, 1996). In an attempt to settle the ambiguity of the role of parents in children’s attitudes, the present experiment sought to measure implicit beliefs of both parent and children alike on the growing Asian immigrant population in New Zealand. This experiment used a variety of previously utilised measures for parents including SDO/RWA scales (Duckitt, 2001), and the IAT (Greenwald, Nosek, & Banaji, 2003), and the playmate preference task for children (Castelli, Tomerlleleri & Zogmasieter, 2009). This experiment also introduced the use of Virtual Reality and the first child adapted SDO/RWA scales to measure child attitudes. Results suggest that parents typically score low on their measures, while their children independently score highly on measures. However, the relationship between parents and children supports a strong relationship between parent and child beliefs. From understanding the role of parents in the development of their child’s attitudes, we have experimental evidence to support that parents in New Zealand significantly impact their child’s attitudes on out-group individuals
A Fairy Tale or a True Story? Lie Detection and Leakage
No full textLiars may try to act like they are telling the truth, yet these attempts may fail. Ekman (1992) has argued that liars may leak clues to their true feelings in fleeting expressions. This thesis tested this idea. Facial expression differences between university students’ lies and truths were examined with facial recognition software and behaviour rating scales.
Study 1 examined if participants’ (N=102) facial expressions varied as a function of the content that they had viewed, when they honestly or deceptively described a film. When brief episodes of increased muscle tension were isolated in the computer analysis a clear trend emerged for there to be more muscle movement in lies than truths across the face (i.e. brow, eyes, nose and chin). However, the film content (which was designed to elicit feelings of amusement, disgust or no emotional response) did not contribute to this difference. The trend identified in Study 1, was replicated in Study 2, in which participants (n=41) were asked to discuss their opinions truthfully and deceptively. However, the findings did not generalise to a condition where participants (n=40) provided arguments that were consistent or inconsistent with their opinion, when lying was not required. Thus, factors specific to situations in which lying is required (e.g. attempts to manage deception cues) may account for the difference.
Study 3 examined if students with better emotion recognition skills (n=68) may be better at detecting lies because they notice emotional expressions that others may miss. Participants (N=138) rated the behaviour of speakers from Study 1, and judged whether they were lying. The results suggest that lie judgements may be related to the participants’ expectations, and that those with better emotion recognition skills may not have special skills at distinguishing genuine and deceptive expressions. In Study 4, ratings were obtained for messages collected in Study 2 (N=100). Arguments (i.e. opinion-consistent/inconsistent) varied for emotional expression, but lies and truths did not. Thus, it appears impression management processes may contribute to the difference in facial lability identified in Study 1 and 2
Social Understanding in the Community: Establishing Links to Previous Family Issues as well as an Understanding of Mental States on Disadvantaged Adolescents
No full textObjective
The purpose of the present study was to assess links to previous familial issues as well as an understanding of mental states on disadvantaged adolescents while controlling for age, fluid intelligence, and verbal ability. The other objective was to compare atypical adolescents to typical counterparts about general reasoning and social understanding.
Method
Participants included 50 individuals who had experienced previous maltreatment (physical abuse/ neglect) aged 9 to 26 years-old and 90 university students (typical) aged 18 - 33 years-old. Participants completed fluid intelligence task (Raven Progress Matrices), vocabulary task (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test), Emotion Faces Task, Eye task, Point Light Tasks (emotion and action), and Mr Bean Task.
Result
Results of multivariate analysis of covariance of both groups indicated that the atypical group was not generally worse than the typical group on the tasks tapping social understanding; they were better on two tasks and worse on one task. The partial correlation analyses performed only on the atypical group indicated that the correlations were inconsistent in indicating that emotional/physical abuse was associated with both correct and incorrect responding to Mr Bean mental state task.
Conclusions
The findings suggest the complexity of the relation between social understanding and wellbeing variables, in that the maltreated youth would do well on one task and poorly on another. These findings suggest the unpredictability in maltreated individuals’ reading of others’ mental states and the possibility that social understanding improves in abused youth over time
The Role of Empathy and Emotion Recognition in Prejudice and Right-Wing Authoritarianism in Older Adults
No full textResearch suggests that older adults are higher in racial prejudice and Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) than younger adults, and that these differences may be attributable to executive functioning deficits. However, ageing also brings changes in social cognitive functioning, including empathy and emotion recognition, and the role of these factors in older adults’ social attitudes has not been sufficiently explored. In this thesis, I examined executive functioning, empathy, emotion recognition, prejudice toward Asians, and RWA in older and younger adults. Older adults were significantly lower in explicit prejudice and higher in RWA than younger adults. Using regression analyses, I found that age differences in explicit prejudice were not independent of emotion recognition, and age differences in RWA were not independent of executive functioning. Within-groups analyses showed that empathy, executive functioning, and emotion recognition did not relate to prejudice or RWA in younger adults. In older adults, emotion recognition and empathy predicted explicit prejudice, perspective-taking predicted implicit prejudice, and emotion recognition and executive functioning predicted RWA. The effect of emotion recognition on RWA in older adults was independent of feelings of threat and anxiety toward the outgroup, but the effect of emotion recognition on explicit prejudice was not. This suggests that emotion recognition difficulties in older adults lead to greater feelings of threat and greater expression of prejudice, and also may lead to difficulty understanding that extreme right-wing attitudes are offensive to others
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