Does Attention to One’s Own Emotion Relate to the Emotional Interpretation of Other People’s Faces?

Do individual differences in attention to one’s own emotion relate to the way individuals interpret emotion in other people? For example, although the accuracy has been debated, people’s facial expressions are often perceived as providing information about their emotional state. Previous research on individual differences in attention to emotion has mostly looked at how individuals categorize the emotions they believe other people to have or to the extent to which individuals have dysregulated attention to emotional information. However, less is known about other facets of emotional interpretation such as perceptions of emotional intensity and genuineness. One hypothesis, suggested by previous literature on categorization, is that higher attention to one’s own emotion may result in greater differentiation of the cues perceived to relate to emotional intensity and genuineness. On the other hand, previous research on dysregulated attention to emotion suggests a second possibility: higher attention to emotion might instead result in heightened weighting of facial expressions which tend to be perceived to indicate emotional intensity and genuineness. Across two studies, participants rated their perception of emotional intensity in facial expressions and their perception of genuineness in Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles. Contrary to both hypotheses, attention to emotion did not significantly relate to perceived emotional intensity or genuineness (Study 1). Furthermore, whereas an exploratory test suggested a significant relation between attention to emotion and the average perceived intensity of different emotion categories (Study 1), the relation was not significant in a conceptual replication study (Study 2). The current research highlights the possibility that future research may benefit from explorations of an expanded range of biased perceptions of facial expressions in relation to individual differences in attention to emotion.