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The current study explored the judgments individuals with Substance Use Disorders (SUDs) make regarding the authenticity of enjoyment smile expressions and masking smile expressions containing traces of negative emotions. Accuracy at identifying the masked negative emotions were also examined. Eye-movements were recorded to observe relationships between attentional processes and smile judgment. Additionally, the relationship between smile judgment, emotion dysregulation, and interpersonal problems were also investigated. Twenty individuals with SUDs being treated from a local treatment center and twenty individuals matched on gender/age participated in the smile judgment task, which involved a smile expression characteristic of enjoyment and six smile expressions containing traces of either fear, disgust, anger in eyes, anger in mouth, sadness in eyes, and sadness in mouth. Results indicated that individuals with SUDs were no different in their categorization of the smiles. The lack of difference may be due to their previously observed biases at interpreting expressions as negative, as the results indicated that individuals with SUDs were significantly more likely to report the presence of negative emotions in the expressions. They were also more often incorrect in their identification of the masked emotions. No link was observed between smile judgment and attentional processes. Emotional and interpersonal functioning were related more to the ability to distinguish smile authenticity than the ability to identify masked emotions.

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Background While some research indicates that individuals can accurately judge smile authenticity of enjoyment and masking smile expressions, other research suggest modest judgment rates of masking smiles. The current study explored the role of emotion-related individual differences in the judgment of authenticity and recognition of negative emotions in enjoyment and masking smile expressions as a potential explanation for the differences observed. Methods Specifically, Experiment 1 investigated the role of emotion contagion (Doherty in J Nonverbal Behav 21:131–154, 1997), emotion intelligence (Schutte et al. in Personality Individ Differ 25:167–177, 1998), and emotion regulation (Gratz and Roemer in J Psychopathol Behav Assess 26:41–54, 2004) in smile authenticity judgment and recognition of negative emotions in masking smiles. Experiment 2 investigated the role of state and trait anxiety (Spielberger et al. in Manual for the state-trait anxiety inventory, Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto, 1983) in smile authenticity judgment and recognition of negative emotions in the same masking smiles. In both experiments, repeated measures ANOVAs were conducted for judgment of authenticity, probability of producing the expected response, for the detection of another emotion, and for emotion recognition. A series of correlations were also calculated between the proportion of expected responses of smile judgement and the scores on the different subscales. Results Results of the smile judgment and recognition tasks were replicated in both studies, and echoed results from prior studies of masking smile judgment: participants rated enjoyment smiles as happier than the masking smiles and, of the masking smiles, participants responded “really happy” more often for the angry-eyes masking smiles and more often categorized fear masking smiles as “not really happy”. Conclusions Overall, while the emotion-related individual differences used in our study seem to have an impact on recognition of basic emotions in the literature, our study suggest that these traits, except for emotional awareness, do not predict performances on the judgment of complex expressions such as masking smiles. These results provide further information regarding the factors that do and do not contribute to greater judgment of smile authenticity and recognition of negative emotions in masking smiles.