Bonding Pictures: Affective Ratings Are Specifically Associated to Loneliness But Not to Empathy

Abstract

Responding to pro-social cues plays an important adaptive role in humans. Our aims were (i) to create a catalog of bonding and matched-control pictures to compare the emotional reports of valence and arousal with the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) pictures; (ii) to verify sex influence on the valence and arousal of bonding and matched-control pictures; (iii) to investigate if empathy and loneliness traits exert a specific influence on emotional reports for the bonding pictures. To provide a finer tool for social interaction studies, the present work defined two new sets of pictures consisting of “interacting dyads” (Bonding: N = 70) and matched controls “non-interacting dyads” (Controls: N = 70). The dyads could be either a child and an adult, or two children. Participants (N = 283, 182 women) were divided in 10 groups for the experimental sessions. The task was to rate the hedonic valence and emotional arousal of bonding and controls; and of pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures from the IAPS. Effects of social-related traits, empathy and loneliness, on affective ratings were tested. Participants rated bonding pictures as more pleasant and arousing than control ones. Ratings did not differentiate bonding from IAPS pleasant pictures. Control pictures showed lower ratings than pleasant but higher ratings than neutral IAPS pictures. Women rated bonding and control pictures as more positive than men. There was no sex difference for arousal ratings. High empathic participants rated bonding and control pictures higher than low empathic participants. Also, they rated pleasant IAPS pictures more positive and arousing; and unpleasant pictures more negative and arousing than the less empathic ones. Loneliness trait, on the other hand, affected very specifically the ratings of bonding pictures; lonelier participants rated them less pleasant and less arousing than less lonely. Loneliness trait did not modulate ratings of other categories. In conclusion, high empathy seems related to emotional strength in general, while high loneliness seems to weaken the engagement in social interaction cues.

Pictures of social interaction prompt a sustained increase of the smile expression and induce sociability

“…Social scenes can facilitate approach behaviors, through the activation of the appetitive motivational system, assessed through behavioral 22 and electroencephalographic 23 measures. The literature also indicates that positive social interaction cues, such as situations of cooperation, are efficient to increase the activity of the zygomaticus major muscle, to decrease the activity of corrugator supercilli muscle 10 , and might also be considered as more pleasant and more arousing than stimuli without social interaction 9 . As previously mentioned, smiling plays an essential role in social life, and zygomatic activation is associated with positive social contexts 1 , 2 , 5 , 27 , 28 .…”

“…Bonding and control pictures were selected from a catalogue of pictures our research team previously created to study visual stimuli with and without social interaction content. All pictures were classified by valence and arousal 9 , following IAPS’s 12 normative instructions (see Silva et al 9 for more details about the catalogue and classification; for examples of stimuli used in this project, see Fig. 1 ).…”

“…Visual affiliated stimuli, such as pictures of families, serve as powerful social stimuli and are rated as highly pleasant and evoked the highest EMG activity in the zygomaticus major muscle compared to other picture categories (e.g., adventure, erotic, nature, objects, pollution, incidents) 8 . Social bonding stimuli, such as dyads interacting, are perceived as more pleasant and arousing than non-bonding stimuli, such as dyads not interacting 9 . During positive social conditions, such as achieving a higher social status or viewing dyads happily interacting, individuals tend to present higher zygomatic EMG activity but lower corrugator EMG activity (related to frowning) 10 , 11 .…”

Emotional Responses to Pleasant Sounds Are Related to Social Disconnectedness and Loneliness Independent of Hearing Loss

“…Finally, sound stimuli in the study included a mixture of nonspeech sounds, some of which convey social information (e.g., laughter, crying) and some of which do not (e.g., carousel, hiccup). Previous work demonstrates that lonely and nonlonely participants are evident in responses to social stimuli, but not nonsocial stimuli Silva et al, 2017). To explore the possibility that the nature of the sounds influenced the relationship between emotional responses and isolation, emotional responses were calculated separately for responses to social and nonsocial sounds (see Appendix for indication of which sounds were labeled ''social'').…”

Complex Scenes From the International Affective Picture System (IAPS)

“…In a related line of work, research has highlighted the functional distinction between affective visual stimuli which portray humans and those which do not ( Colden, Bruder, & Manstead, 2008 ; Peterman, Bekele, Bian, Sarkar, & Park, 2015 ; Silva et al., 2017 ). These studies are situated within a broader movement toward the study of emotion from an embodied perspective ( Colden et al, 2008 ; Peterman et al, 2015 ; Rubo & Gamer, 2018 ; Rutherford, Maupin, & Mayes, 2018 ; Silva et al, 2017 ). This perspective recognizes that images that feature people convey unique social information and hold interpersonal relevance ( Colden et al, 2008 ).…”