Kang Wonjun, Kim Gayoung, Kim Hyehyeon, Lee Sue-Hyun
Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, College of Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon 34141, Korea.
Program of Brain and Cognitive Engineering, College of Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon 34141, Korea.
Exp Neurobiol. 2019 Apr;28(2):261-269. doi: 10.5607/en.2019.28.2.261. Epub 2019 Apr 30.
The recognition of emotional facial expressions is critical for our social interactions. While some prior studies have shown that a high anxiety level is associated with more sensitive recognition of emotion, there are also reports supporting that anxiety did not affect or reduce the sensitivity to the recognition of facial emotions. To reconcile these results, here we investigated whether the effect of individual anxiety on the recognition of facial emotions is dependent on the emotion category and the race of the target faces. We found that, first, there was a significant positive correlation between the individual anxiety level and the recognition sensitivity for angry faces but not for sad or happy faces. Second, while the correlation was significant for both low- and high-intensity angry faces during the recognition of the observer's own-race faces, there was significant correlation only for low-intensity angry faces during the recognition of other-race faces. Collectively, our results suggest that the influence of anxiety on the recognition of facial emotions is flexible depending on the characteristics of the target face stimuli including emotion category and race.
对面部表情的识别对于我们的社交互动至关重要。虽然先前的一些研究表明，高焦虑水平与更敏感的情绪识别有关，但也有报告支持焦虑不会影响或降低对面部情绪识别的敏感性。为了协调这些结果，我们在此研究了个体焦虑对面部情绪识别的影响是否取决于情绪类别和目标面孔的种族。我们发现，首先，个体焦虑水平与对愤怒面孔的识别敏感性之间存在显著正相关，而与悲伤或快乐面孔的识别敏感性之间不存在显著正相关。其次，在识别观察者自己种族的面孔时，对于低强度和高强度的愤怒面孔，这种相关性都很显著；而在识别其他种族的面孔时，仅对于低强度的愤怒面孔存在显著相关性。总体而言，我们的结果表明，焦虑对面部情绪识别的影响是灵活的，这取决于目标面部刺激的特征，包括情绪类别和种族。
