Context and Mood Effects in Interpreting Ambiguous Facial Expressions.

Abstract

Dear Editor, We have recently read that the typical bias toward a negative valence in the classification of ambiguous facial expressions shifts toward positivity through mindfulness interventions (Harp et al., 2022). In general, the classification and interpretation of facial emotions is influenced by a pattern of external cues (e.g., the expresser, visual cues, auditive and verbal cues, body language) and internal cues of the perceiver (e.g., cultural background, mood, personality traits, social learning, psychiatric and neurological disorders, mindfulness; Newen et al., 2015). However, it remains unclear which of these cues are critical in the classification of ambiguous faces. Thus, we performed a pilot study which examined the emotion classification of seven ambiguous facial expressions that were presented on a computer screen in front of eight different emotional contexts suggestive of happiness, fear, anger, disgust and sadness in a randomized order (see, Figure 1), and afterward in their original context. The analyzed sample comprised 38 healthy participants (21 females and 17 males) at a mean age of 22.21 years (SD = 3.138). Mood, life events, and personality were examined using selfreport questionnaires and participants rated their subjective use of context-, eyeand faceinformation by use of a slider bar. A series of explorative paired Wilcoxon tests revealed that emotional contexts affected the classification of ambiguous facial expressions. Results were most concise in a highly salient context suggesting disgust (a picture of maggots), which led to a significantly more frequent classification of disgust than all other emotions. Regarding the other emotional contexts except for contexts suggesting happiness, participants significantly more frequently classified the emotion suggested by the context than most other emotions. Across all emotional conditions, participants more frequently classified emotions of negative valence (fear, anger, sadness, disgust). In the original context, faces were instead classified predominantly as happy, followed by surprise. Bivariate Spearman correlational analyses between the self-reported information and emotional classifications revealed that the participants’ subjective use of contextual but not facial information, the irritability and fear experience subscales of the mood questionnaire (Eigenschaftswörterliste/EWL-K, Janke & Debus, 1978) and