The uncharted waters of emotion: Ethnicity, trait emotion and emotion expression in older adults

Emotions are central to contemporary theories of health, and a growingbody of psychological research has shown emotion and emotion regulatorystyles to be predictive of health outcomes. Yet despite these clear links andthe fact that patterns of emotion and expression are partially a product ofculture, there is a meager literature on the emotional characteristics ofdifferent ethnic groups. Even where ethnicity has been investigated inemotions research, it has typically been operationalized in such a way thatwithin-group differences are obscured with most individuals assigned tobroad ethnic categories, such as non-Hispanic White, or Black. In thepresent study we draw on data from a multi-ethnic sample of 755community-dwelling older adults to parse a picture of the emotionalcharacteristics of three of the largest and most culturally distinct ethnicgroups in the Northeastern United States: African Americans, West Indians (Jamaicans), andEastern Slavs (Russians and Ukrainians) from the former Soviet Republic,as well as a comparison group of US-born European Americans. Aspredicted, there were striking differences in nine of 10 trait emotions aswell as in levels of emotion expressed during conflict. The findings arediscussed in terms of emotion socialization and implications for predictionand intervention in psychosocial models of emotions, emotion regulation,and health in older ethnic populations.     

Ethnic variation in the impact of negative affect and emotion inhibition on the health of older adults

The relations between patterns of emotional experience, emotion inhibition, and physical health have been little studied in older adults or ethnically diverse samples. Testing hypotheses derived from work on younger adults, the authors examined the relations between negative affect and emotion inhibition and that of illness (hypertension, respiratory disease, arthritis, and sleep disorder) in a sample (N = 1,118) of community-dwelling older adults from four ethnic groups: U.S.-born African Americans, African Caribbeans, U.S.-born European Americans, and Eastern European immigrants. Participants completed measures of stress, lifestyle risk factors, health, social support, trait negative emotion, and emotion inhibition. As expected, the interaction of ethnicity with emotion inhibition, and, to a lesser extent, negative affect, was significantly related to illness, even when other known risk factors were controlled for. However, the relations among these variables were complex, and the patterns did not hold for all types of illness or operate in the same direction across ethnic groups. Implications for emotion-health relationships in ethnically diverse samples are discussed.     

愤怒情志与阿尔茨海默病关系的病例对照研究

目的探讨愤怒情志与阿尔茨海默病(AD)的病因学关系,为愤怒长期积累可加速脑老化的论断提供流行病学依据。方法选取AD患者作为病例,以医院或社区无痴呆病、抑郁症等神经或精神疾病史者为对照,按同性别、同年龄段(±3岁)、同文化程度进行1∶1匹配的病例对照研究。调查方式为面对面访谈。结果 AD患者特质怒得分明显高于正常对照组(P<0.01);与正常对照组相比,高特质怒个体AD发病风险明显高于低特质怒个体(P<0.01),OR值(95%CI)为51.857(14.009,191.954);AD患者怒的表达(AX-O、AX-I)显著高于正常对照组(P<0.01),而怒的控制(AC-O、AC-I)显著低于正常对照组(P<0.01),AD患者怒表达指数显著高于正常对照组(P<0.01)。结论愤怒情志与AD发病相关,高特质怒是AD发病的危险因素;与正常人群相比,AD患者具有容易发怒或郁怒的倾向或特质,怒的表达程度高而控制力较弱。     

Consciousness and emotion

This article focuses on the processes that lead to awareness of our own emotions, which deserve particular attention in contemporary models of emotional consciousness. The subjective component of emotion, or emotional experience, was for a long time the most neglected aspect in the study of emotions although it already constituted the initial point of discussion in the famous William James still asked question : What is an emotion? More than a century later, contemporary theories debate about this heritage. We examine the successive historic contributions to the question of the determinants of our own emotional experience: from James-Lange bodily changes to cognitive appraisal theories, also relating the major role that the fundamental emotions theory attributed to facial expressions. Twenty years after the debate about primacy of cognition or emotion, both physiological-somatic and cognitive components are integrated in contemporary approaches to emotions. However, their respective degree of implication varies according to the different levels of emotional consciousness which are modelized. It is on the last level that present models focus, level that leads to consciousness of our emotional experience, benefiting from the contributions of cognitive neurosciences. Models differ according to the role devoted to neuronal substrates in determining emotional experience, but they converge on the specification of a last level of consciousness, which is the only one that allows the subject to be conscious of emotion as it is experienced (feeling) and that what he is experiencing is an emotion. Then, different models of emotional consciousness account for different varieties of emotion experience and also for various cases of < unconscious > emotions, that is occurrence of emotion with a lack of awareness.     

The effects of anger and sadness on clinical pain reports and experimentally‐induced pain thresholds in women with and without fibromyalgia

Objective

Negative emotions are commonly experienced in fibromyalgia and may affect pain. This study examined the effects of anger and sadness on clinical pain reports and on pain threshold and tolerance in response to electrical stimulation in women with and without fibromyalgia.

Methods

In an experimental study, 62 women with fibromyalgia and 59 women without fibromyalgia recalled a neutral situation, followed by recalling both an anger‐inducing and a sadness‐inducing situation, in counterbalanced order. The effect of these emotions on pain responses (non‐induced clinical pain and experimentally‐induced sensory threshold, pain threshold, and pain tolerance) was analyzed with a repeated‐measures analysis of variance.

Results

Clinical pain reports increased (P < 0.001) in women with fibromyalgia, and pain threshold (P < 0.001) and tolerance (P < 0.001) decreased in both groups in response to anger and sadness induction. Sadness reactivity predicted clinical pain responses. Anger reactivity predicted both clinical and electrically‐stimulated pain responses.

Conclusion

The experience of both anger and sadness amplifies pain in women with and without fibromyalgia. A stronger emotion‐induced pain response was associated with more emotional reactivity. No convincing evidence was found for a larger sensitivity to anger and sadness in women with fibromyalgia than in women without fibromyalgia, or for a larger sensitivity to anger than to sadness in fibromyalgia. The occurrence of anger and sadness appears to be a general risk factor for pain amplification. Emotion regulation techniques may attenuate emotional pain sensitization in patients with fibromyalgia.     

Age differences in emotion recognition skills and the visual scanning of emotion faces

Research suggests that a person's emotion recognition declines with advancing years. We examined whether or not this age-related decline was attributable to a tendency to overlook emotion information in the eyes. In Experiment 1, younger adults were significantly better than older adults at inferring emotions from full faces and eyes, though not from mouths. Using an eye tracker in Experiment 2, we found young adults, in comparison with older adults, to have superior emotion recognition performance and to look proportionately more to eyes than mouths. However, although better emotion recognition performance was significantly correlated with more eye looking in younger adults, the same was not true in older adults. We discuss these results in terms of brain changes with age.     

Emotion Recognition in Face and Body Motion in Bulimia Nervosa

Social cognition has been studied extensively in anorexia nervosa (AN), but there are few studies in bulimia nervosa (BN). This study investigated the ability of people with BN to recognise emotions in ambiguous facial expressions and in body movement. Participants were 26 women with BN, who were compared with 35 with AN, and 42 healthy controls. Participants completed an emotion recognition task by using faces portraying blended emotions, along with a body emotion recognition task by using videos of point‐light walkers. The results indicated that BN participants exhibited difficulties recognising disgust in less‐ambiguous facial expressions, and a tendency to interpret non‐angry faces as anger, compared with healthy controls. These difficulties were similar to those found in AN. There were no significant differences amongst the groups in body motion emotion recognition. The findings suggest that difficulties with disgust and anger recognition in facial expressions may be shared transdiagnostically in people with eating disorders. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.     

Emotion Recognition in Blended Facial Expressions in Women with Anorexia Nervosa

People with anorexia nervosa (AN) have difficulties in the social domain, and problems in the ability to recognise emotions in people's faces may contribute to these difficulties. This study aimed to investigate emotion recognition in women with AN and healthy controls (HC), using pictures of faces portraying blended emotions at different levels of ambiguity, which resemble real‐life expressions more closely than prototypical expressions used in past studies. Seventy‐seven participants (35 AN; 42 HC) completed the emotion recognition task. Results indicated that participants with AN were less accurate than HC recognising expressions of disgust, when shown less ambiguously. There were no differences in the recognition of other emotions. Participants with AN also showed response bias towards anger. These findings suggest a generally preserved ability to recognise emotions in women with AN, with the exception of disgust recognition. They also support previous findings of bias towards anger in AN patients. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.     

Visceral sensation and emotion: a study using hypnosis

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: We have previously shown that hypnosis can be used to study the effect of different emotions on the motility of the gastrointestinal tract. These studies demonstrated that both anger and excitement increased colonic motility while happiness led to a reduction. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of hypnotically induced emotion on the visceral sensitivity of the gut. METHODS: Sensory responses to balloon distension of the rectum and compliance were assessed in 20 patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) (aged 17-64 years; 17 female) diagnosed by the Rome I criteria. Patients were studied on four separate occasions in random order either awake (control) or in hypnosis, during which anger, happiness, or relaxation (neutral emotion) were induced. RESULTS: Hypnotic relaxation increased the distension volume required to induce discomfort (p=0.05) while anger reduced this threshold compared with relaxation (p<0.05), happiness (p<0.01), and awake conditions (p<0.001). Happiness did not further alter sensitivity from that observed during relaxation. There were no associated changes in rectal compliance or wall tension. CONCLUSIONS: Further to our previous observations on motility, this study shows that emotion can also affect an IBS patient's perception of rectal distension and demonstrates the critical role of the mind in modulating gastrointestinal physiology. These results emphasise how awareness of the emotional state of the patient is important when either measuring visceral sensitivity or treating IBS.     

Neuroendocrine-immune relationships between emotion regulation and health in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

OBJECTIVES: Emotion regulation is hypothesized to be related to health through neuroendocrine-immune changes. This study examined the role of the neuroendocrine variables 24-h urinary cortisol and noradrenaline, and the immune variable serum interleukin 6 as mediators between emotion regulation styles and health (perceived health and disease activity: erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and Thompson joint score). METHODS: Sixty patients with rheumatoid arthritis (mean age 59.0+/-11.2 yr; 38 female) participated. RESULTS: Emotion regulation was not associated with immune functioning or disease activity, but it was somewhat related to neuroendocrine functioning: one of the emotion regulation styles, ambiguity, was related to noradrenaline in women (r = 0.39) but not in men. The indicators of neuroendocrine functioning (cortisol and noradrenaline) were correlated (r = 0.40), as were indicators of immune functioning (interleukin 6) and inflammatory activity (ESR; r = 0.53), but analyses did not indicate a role of these physiological variables in mediating between emotion regulation and health: neuroendocrine variables were not related to interleukin 6 or ESR, and none of the physiological parameters was correlated with joint score or perceived health. CONCLUSIONS: To examine whether the proposed mediational processes apply to individual patients, a longitudinal within-subjects design is needed. In our cross-sectional study, emotion regulation was somewhat related to neuroendocrine functioning, but our study did not uncover a potential mediational role of cortisol, noradrenaline or interleukin 6 in the relationship between emotion regulation and health in rheumatoid arthritis.     

Compound facial expressions of emotion

Understanding the different categories of facial expressions of emotion regularly used by us is essential to gain insights into human cognition and affect as well as for the design of computational models and perceptual interfaces. Past research on facial expressions of emotion has focused on the study of six basic categories—happiness, surprise, anger, sadness, fear, and disgust. However, many more facial expressions of emotion exist and are used regularly by humans. This paper describes an important group of expressions, which we call compound emotion categories. Compound emotions are those that can be constructed by combining basic component categories to create new ones. For instance, happily surprised and angrily surprised are two distinct compound emotion categories. The present work defines 21 distinct emotion categories. Sample images of their facial expressions were collected from 230 human subjects. A Facial Action Coding System analysis shows the production of these 21 categories is different but consistent with the subordinate categories they represent (e.g., a happily surprised expression combines muscle movements observed in happiness and surprised). We show that these differences are sufficient to distinguish between the 21 defined categories. We then use a computational model of face perception to demonstrate that most of these categories are also visually discriminable from one another.

Some men … have the same facial expressions. … For when one suffers anything, one becomes as if one has the kind of expression: when one is angry, the sign of the same class is angry.

Physiognomics, unknown author (attributed to Aristotle), circa fourth-century B.C. (1)

As nicely illustrated in the quote above, for centuries it has been known that many emotional states are broadcasted to the world through facial expressions of emotion. Contemporaries of Aristotle studied how to read facial expressions and how to categorize them (2). In a majestic monograph, Duchenne (3) demonstrated which facial muscles are activated when producing commonly observed facial expressions of emotion, including happiness, surprise (attention), sadness, anger (aggression), fear, and disgust.Surprisingly, although Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Hobbes (1, 4, 5), among others, mentioned other types of facial expressions, subsequent research has mainly focused on the study of the six facial expressions of emotion listed above (6–9). However, any successful theory and computational model of visual perception and emotion ought to explain how all possible facial expressions of emotion are recognized, not just the six listed above. For example, people regularly produce a happily surprised expression and observers do not have any problem distinguishing it from a facial expression of angrily surprised (Fig. 1 H and Q). To achieve this, the facial movements involved in the production stage should be different from those of other categories of emotion, but consistent with those of the subordinate categories being expressed, which means the muscle activations of happily surprised should be sufficiently different from those of angrily surprised, if they are to be unambiguously discriminated by observers. At the same time, we would expect that happily surprised will involve muscles typically used in the production of facial expressions of happiness and surprise such that both subordinate categories can be readily detected.Open in a separate windowFig. 1.Sample images of the 22 categories in the database: (A) neutral, (B) happy, (C) sad, (D) fearful, (E) angry, (F) surprised, (G) disgusted, (H) happily surprised, (I) happily disgusted, (J) sadly fearful, (K) sadly angry, (L) sadly surprised, (M) sadly disgusted, (N) fearfully angry, (O) fearfully surprised, (P) fearfully disgusted, (Q) angrily surprised, (R) angrily disgusted, (S) disgustedly surprised, (T) appalled, (U) hatred, and (V) awed.The emotion categories described above can be classified into two groups. We refer to the first group as basic emotions, which include happiness, surprise, anger, sadness, fear, and disgust (see sample images in Fig. 1 B–G). Herein, we use the term “basic” to refer to the fact that such emotion categories cannot be decomposed into smaller semantic labels. We could have used other terms, such as “component” or “cardinal” emotions, but we prefer basic because this terminology is already prevalent in the literature (10); this is not to mean that these categories are more basic than others, because this is an area of intense debate (11).The second group corresponds to compound emotions. Here, compound means that the emotion category is constructed as a combination of two basic emotion categories. Obviously, not all combinations are meaningful for humans. Fig. 1 H–S shows the 12 compound emotions most typically expressed by humans. Another set of three typical emotion categories includes appall, hate, and awe (Fig. 1 T–V). These three additional categories are also defined as compound emotions. Appall is the act of feeling disgust and anger with the emphasis being on disgust; i.e., when appalled we feel more disgusted than angry. Hate also involves the feeling of disgust and anger but, this time, the emphasis is on anger. Awe is the feeling of fear and wonder (surprise) with the emphasis being placed on the latter.In the present work, we demonstrate that the production and visual perception of these 22 emotion categories is consistent within categories and differential between them. These results suggest that the repertoire of facial expressions typically used by humans is better described using a rich set of basic and compound categories rather than a small set of basic elements.     

阿尔茨海默病危险因素的Logistic回归分析

目的探讨阿尔茨海默病(AD)的危险因素,初步分析愤怒情志与AD的关系。方法选取AD患者作为病例,以医院、社区无痴呆病及抑郁症等神经或精神疾病史者为对照,按同性别、同年龄段(±3岁)、同文化程度进行1∶1匹配的病例对照研究。调查方式为面对面访谈。结果单因素分析结果显示,健身锻炼、娱乐活动、家庭和睦、人际关系、AD家族史、脑外伤史、特质怒与AD有统计学关联(P<0.05)。而吸烟、饮酒、负性生活事件、既往心脑血管病史、既往职业接触史与AD无统计学关联(P>0.05)。多因素分析结果显示,高特质怒、AD家族史、健身锻炼和娱乐活动与AD有统计学关联(P<0.05)。结论高特质怒、AD家族史是AD的危险因素,健身锻炼和娱乐活动是AD的保护因素。愤怒情志与AD密切相关,频繁发怒或郁怒等慢性愤怒应激是诱发AD的原因之一。     

Effects of age and emotional intensity on the recognition of facial emotion

Older adults have a specific deficit in their ability to identify some negative facial emotions. The present study investigated the influence of intensity of expression on 40 young and 40 older adults' recognition of facial expressions of emotion. Older adults showed no impairment in the perception of low-intensity subtle expressions of happiness, surprise, and disgust. However, older adults were worse at recognizing all intensities of sadness, anger, and fear, with the greatest impairment at 50% intensity. Observed age differences were not influenced by covarying general facial processing skills, but were substantially reduced when a measure of general cognitive functioning was covaried. The current study suggests that age differences in identifying facial expressions of emotion are not caused by decreasing visual perceptual abilities, but may partially overlap with general cognitive changes.     

Pilot study of Aurora, a social, mobile-phone-based emotion sharing and recording system

Background:Emotion is a ubiquitous aspect of humanity that governs behavior in a number of ways and is linked inextricably with health. Pausing to evaluate one’s emotional state in the face of decisions and reflecting on past patterns of emotion have been shown to improve behaviors. Further, social expression of emotion has been shown to directly improve health outcomes. While the virtual reality research community does not ignore emotion on the whole, there does exist a need to explore what roles emotional awareness and emotion sharing can play in this domain.Methods:A mobile-phone-based social emotion recording and sharing system, Aurora, was developed to provide individuals with a means to pause and evaluate their emotional state, reflect on past emotions, share emotions with others, and participate in socially supportive activities with peers. A study was conducted with 65 subjects to evaluate Aurora as a tool to encourage emotional reflection and awareness as well as social sharing of emotion.Results:Users of Aurora reported an increased comfort in socially expressing emotion and were encouraged to share emotions, even with strangers. Subjects also reported liking reflecting on their emotional state and found it valuable. Subjects’ behavior also suggested that the system encouraged individuals to reach out to one another in acts of social support.Conclusions:The Aurora system offers a tool for encouraging emotional awareness, emotion sharing, and socially supportive behavior. Such a tool could be impactful in numerous health settings where emotion is considered to be an important indicator of or influence on outcome, such as for weight loss, alcohol cessation, or cancer sufferers.     

The Influence of Personality Traits on Emotion Expression in Bulimic Spectrum Disorders: A Pilot Study

Facial expressions are critical in forming social bonds and in signalling one's emotional state to others. In eating disorder patients, impairments in facial emotion recognition have been associated with eating psychopathology severity. Little research however has been carried out on how bulimic spectrum disorder (BSD) patients spontaneously express emotions. Our aim was to investigate emotion expression in BSD patients and to explore the influence of personality traits. Our study comprised 28 BSD women and 15 healthy controls. Facial expressions were recorded while participants played a serious video game. Expressions of anger and joy were used as outcome measures. Overall, BSD participants displayed less facial expressiveness than controls. Among BSD women, expressions of joy were positively associated with reward dependence, novelty seeking and self‐directedness, whereas expressions of anger were associated with lower self‐directedness. Our findings suggest that specific personality traits are associated with altered emotion facial expression in patients with BSD. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.     

Deconstructing positive affect in later life: a differential functionalist analysis of joy and interest

Positive affect, an index of psychological well-being, is a known predictor of functionality and health in later life. Measures typically studied include joy, happiness, and subjective well-being, but less often interest--a positive emotion with functional properties that differ from joy or happiness. Following differential emotions theory, the present study measured trait joy and interest in a population-based sample of 1,118 adults aged 65-86 years. As predicted, trait joy was associated with greater religious participation, while trait interest was associated with greater education. Joy was associated with lower morbidity and stress while interest was not. Interest was, in fact, associated with greater stress. Both emotions were positively associated with social support. We use the pattern of predictors to develop a functionalist conceptualization of these two emotions in later life, concluding that it is worthwhile to treat interest and joy as partially-independent positive affects contributing differentially to human emotionality and later life adaptation.     

Cell-free DNA levels in pregnancies at risk of sickle-cell disease and significant ethnic variation

Cell-free (cf) DNA in maternal circulation is increasingly investigated in pregnancy. This study aimed to determine whether sickle-cell trait women had quantitative differences of cf-DNA to controls and if there was an ethnic difference between the cf-DNA levels of Northern European and African/African-Caribbean populations. Non-invasive prenatal diagnosis, through quantification of fetal and total cf-DNA, was tested in 33 pregnant women at risk of carrying a fetus affected with sickle-cell disease and 124 control pregnancies. A significant variation in cf-DNA was found between ethnic groups, which should be taken into consideration in future studies measuring cf-DNA.     

Emotional coping and tonic blood pressure as determinants of cardiovascular responses to mental stress.

OBJECTIVES: The aim was to assess the combined influence of biological risk for hypertension and patterns of emotional control upon cardiovascular responses to mental stress tests. DESIGN: The study involved the administration of mental stress tests in the laboratory, designed to elicit substantial blood pressure and heart rate responses accompanied by suppression of cardiac baroreflex sensitivity. METHODS: Thirty-seven young men were selected as being at relatively high or low risk through having high or low normal blood pressure. Blood pressure, recorded continuously using the Finapres, heart rate, cardiac baroreflex sensitivity, skin conductance and respiration rate were monitored at rest and during mental arithmetic and mirror drawing tasks. RESULTS: Hypertension risk category had no overall effect upon cardiovascular reactions to mental stress. Two dimensions of emotional coping were identified through factor analysis of psychological questionnaires--anxious emotional inhibition (ratings of trait anxiety, anger in and self-concealment), and anger experience and expression (ratings of trait anger and anger out). Subjects with high and low scores on these dimensions were equally represented in the two blood pressure risk categories. Hypertensive risk interacted with anxious emotional inhibition, with the greatest systolic blood pressure and heart rate responses (accompanied by cardiac baroreflex inhibition) being recorded in subjects at high risk coupled with high anxious emotional inhibition. Anger experience and expression did not interact with hypertension risk, but had a direct effect upon cardiovascular responses to mental stress. No differences were seen in skin conductance or respiratory responses, suggesting specific disturbances of cardiovascular regulation. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that normotensives at risk for future hypertension are likely to show heightened stress-related cardiovascular responses if they also tend to inhibit the expression of negative emotions. This pattern may be relevant to the postulated links between hypertension and emotional inhibition.     

Changes in posed facial expression of emotion across the adult life span

The purpose of this study was to examine changes in the facial expression of emotion across the adult life span. Two positive and two negative emotional expressions were posed by 30 young (21 to 39 years), 30 middle-aged (40 to 59 years), and 30 older (60 to 81 years) healthy, right-handed women. Photographs of the four emotional expressions were rated by independent judges for intensity, accuracy, and confidence. Special features of this study were the use of a neutral face as a nonemotional control, as well as careful cognitive and affective screening procedures for posers and judges. Overall, the expressions of older posers were rated as significantly less accurate and with significantly less confidence than those of younger posers. Although the neutral faces of older posers were rated as significantly more intense than those of younger posers, there were no significant age-related intensity differences for positive and negative emotions. The results are discussed in terms of theoretical models of aging.