Nantes Université, Univ Angers, Laboratoire de Psychologie des Pays de la Loire (LPPL - EA 4638), Nantes, France.
Centre Hospitalier de Tourcoing, Unité de Gériatrie, Tourcoing, France.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2021 Aug;74(8):1360-1367. doi: 10.1177/1747021821992991. Epub 2021 Feb 15.
Future thinking, which is the ability to project oneself forward in time to pre-experience an event, is intimately associated with emotions. We investigated whether emotional future thinking can activate emotional facial expressions. We invited 43 participants to imagine future scenarios, cued by the words "happy," "sad," and "city." Future thinking was video recorded and analysed with a facial analysis software to classify whether facial expressions (i.e., happy, sad, angry, surprised, scared, disgusted, and neutral facial expression) of participants were neutral or emotional. Analysis demonstrated higher levels of happy facial expressions during future thinking cued by the word "happy" than "sad" or "city." In contrast, higher levels of sad facial expressions were observed during future thinking cued by the word "sad" than "happy" or "city." Higher levels of neutral facial expressions were observed during future thinking cued by the word "city" than "happy" or "sad." In the three conditions, the neutral facial expressions were high compared with happy and sad facial expressions. Together, emotional future thinking, at least for future scenarios cued by "happy" and "sad," seems to trigger the corresponding facial expression. Our study provides an original physiological window into the subjective emotional experience during future thinking.
未来思维，即能够在时间上投射自己以预先体验事件的能力，与情绪密切相关。我们研究了情绪性未来思维是否可以激活情绪性面部表情。我们邀请了 43 名参与者想象未来的场景，提示词为“快乐”、“悲伤”和“城市”。未来思维被视频记录下来，并使用面部分析软件进行分析，以分类参与者的面部表情（即快乐、悲伤、愤怒、惊讶、恐惧、厌恶和中性面部表情）是中性的还是情绪化的。分析表明，在提示词为“快乐”的未来思维中，快乐面部表情的水平更高，而在提示词为“悲伤”或“城市”的未来思维中则较低。相反，在提示词为“悲伤”的未来思维中，悲伤面部表情的水平更高，而在提示词为“快乐”或“城市”的未来思维中则较低。在提示词为“城市”的未来思维中，中性面部表情的水平高于提示词为“快乐”或“悲伤”的未来思维。在这三种情况下，中性面部表情与快乐和悲伤面部表情相比都很高。总之，情绪性未来思维，至少对于“快乐”和“悲伤”这两种未来场景提示，似乎会引发相应的面部表情。我们的研究为未来思维中的主观情绪体验提供了一个原始的生理窗口。
