Pandolfi Elisa, Sacripante Riccardo, Cardini Flavia
Department of Psychology, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2016 Dec 14;11(12):e0167462. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0167462. eCollection 2016.
The effect of food substances on emotional states has been widely investigated, showing, for example, that eating chocolate is able to reduce negative mood. Here, for the first time, we have shown that the consumption of specific food substances is not only able to induce particular emotional states, but more importantly, to facilitate recognition of corresponding emotional facial expressions in others. Participants were asked to perform an emotion recognition task before and after eating either a piece of chocolate or a small amount of fish sauce-which we expected to induce happiness or disgust, respectively. Our results showed that being in a specific emotional state improves recognition of the corresponding emotional facial expression. Indeed, eating chocolate improved recognition of happy faces, while disgusted expressions were more readily recognized after eating fish sauce. In line with the embodied account of emotion understanding, we suggest that people are better at inferring the emotional state of others when their own emotional state resonates with the observed one.
食物物质对情绪状态的影响已得到广泛研究，例如，研究表明吃巧克力能够减轻负面情绪。在此，我们首次证明，食用特定的食物物质不仅能够诱发特定的情绪状态，更重要的是，还能促进对他人相应情绪面部表情的识别。参与者被要求在食用一块巧克力或少量鱼露（我们预期分别诱发快乐或厌恶情绪）之前和之后执行一项情绪识别任务。我们的结果表明，处于特定情绪状态会提高对相应情绪面部表情的识别能力。确实，吃巧克力提高了对快乐面孔的识别能力，而在食用鱼露后，厌恶表情更容易被识别。与情绪理解的具身化观点一致，我们认为，当人们自身的情绪状态与观察到的情绪状态产生共鸣时，他们更善于推断他人的情绪状态。
