Early Maladaptive Schemas and the Accuracy of Facial Emotion Recognition: A Preliminary Investigation

Abstract

Different developmental experiences related to deep-rooted beliefs about oneself and others may significantly affect individual social emotional competencies, such as the accuracy of facial emotion recognition and detection. This study presents a preliminary examination of the relationship between early maladaptive schemas (EMSs) and the accuracy of recognizing facial expressions showing basic emotions, neutral faces, and discrimination between neutral and emotional faces. The sample consisted of 138 psychology students (M = 20.33; SD = 1.33, 27 of the respondents were male). JACFEE and JACNeuF (Matsumoto & Ekman, 1988) were used as stimulus material for assessing the facial emotion recognition of seven basic emotions (anger, contempt, disgust, fear, sadness, happiness, and surprise) and neutral faces. The Young Schema Questionnaire – Short Form 3 (YSQ-S3; Young, 2005) was administered as a measure of EMSs. The findings demonstrate that all schema domains affect the accuracy of recognizing facial expressions showing negative emotions (anger, contempt, disgust, fear, and sadness). The Dependence/Incompetence, Entitlement/Grandiosity schemas were significant predictors for detecting neutral faces and discriminating between faces with and without emotion, while the Abandonment/Instability schema additionally proved significant for recognizing neutral faces. Limitations and suggestions for future elaboration are acknowledged.

Decomposing the variance in early maladaptive schemas: the major role of one general factor, the minor role of domains, and their differential relations to facial emotion recognition

“…More recently, Panić et al (2022) conducted a similar study on a student sample. They reported significant and fairly high associations between all the five domains of schemas (from the original structure) and overall recognition of negative emotions.…”

“…This ceiling effect may have affected us more than Csukly et al (2011) , as their overall recognition rate was 48.3%, likely due to their recognition task being more difficult (They used different levels of task intensity). Panić et al (2022) did not report the recognition rate, so the comparison was not possible.…”

“…This ceiling effect may have affected us more than Csukly et al (2011), as their overall recognition rate was 48.3%, likely due to their recognition task being more difficult (They used different levels of task intensity). Panić et al (2022) did not report the recognition rate, so the comparison was not possible. Finally, and from another perspective, the behavioral response can be different for different individuals with the same schema (Young et al, 2003, p. 32); one with an Abandonment schema may avoid cues of rejection; another may get more vigilance; and a third person may use two different strategies at different time points (p. 33).…”

“…Given the basics of the theory, the core emotional needs and the EMSs are both about our interpersonal life. While most studies have focused on their influence on more complicated constructs such as depression and interpersonal problems, recently some researchers have proposed that schemas may affect our interpersonal functions at a more basic level: our ability to recognize emotions from facial cues ( Csukly et al, 2011 ; Panić et al, 2022 ). For instance, a person with an Abandonment schema may be more sensitive to facial cues of disgust; another with a Vulnerability schema may be more sensitive to anger; a third person with a Self-Sacrifice schema may be oversensitive to sadness; and one with an Insufficient Self-Control schema who has a high tendency to avoid discomfort ( Young et al, 2003 , p. 16) may automatically avoid facial cues of sadness or anger.…”

“…This is important for research, given the widespread interest in using domain scores. As a second objective, we used the variance decomposition approach to explore how different variance components of schemas relate to facial emotion recognition, a fairly under investigated topic ( Csukly et al, 2011 ; Panić et al, 2022 ). We suggest that such a framework may facilitate a more in-depth and less biased understanding of how schemas are related to other constructs of interest, especially with regard to the general susceptibility factor which seemingly has not been explored.…”