Emotional scenes and facial expressions elicit different psychophysiological responses

Abstract

We examined if emotional faces elicit physiological responses similar to pictures of emotional scenes. Forty one students viewed emotional scenes (negative, neutral, and positive) and emotional faces (angry, neutral, and happy). Heart rate, orbicularis oculi and electrodermal activity were measured continuously, and the startle reflex was elicited. Although the patterns of valence and arousal ratings were comparable, physiological response patterns differed. For scenes we replicated the valence-specific modulation of the startle response, heart rate deceleration, and the arousal-related modulation of the electrodermal response. In contrast, for faces we found valence-specific modulation only for the electrodermal response, but the startle and heart rate deceleration were modulated by arousal. Although arousal differences may account for some differences in physiological responding this shows that not all emotional material that is decoded similarly leads to the same psychophysiological output.

Cardiac responses to viewing facial emotion differentiate frontotemporal dementias

“…This interpretation is supported by work in the healthy brain 10, 11. The subjective experience of emotion is likely to be integral to the internalization of observed emotional states in others during emotional contagion.…”

“…Central to understanding affective empathy is the concept of interoceptive inference, which proposes that emotional awareness entails reciprocal feedback between somatic physiology and the cognitive interpretation of those signals 8, 9. Emotional stimuli produce autonomic effects including modulation of heart rate, but different emotions do not reliably produce specific individual patterns of autonomic responses, and they are therefore hypothesized to relate to arousal and intensity rather than emotion category 10, 11. Stimulus onset induces a cardiac orienting deceleration, which is modulated by affective content, with greater cardiac deceleration accompanying higher emotional valence 12, 13, 14.…”

Automatic facial responses to briefly presented emotional stimuli in autism spectrum disorder

“…Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs; including autism and Asperger's Syndrome) 1 display marked impairments in social interaction (poor social-emotional reciprocity, deficits in the use of non-verbal communication such as eye-gaze and facial expression) and the presence of repetitive and stereotyped behaviours (APA, 2000(APA, , 2013. Consistent with diagnostic criteria of marked deficits in reciprocal social interaction, individuals with ASDs generally have impaired emotion processing and recognition.…”

Gender of the expresser moderates the effect of emotional faces on the startle reflex

“…Some studies have reported the expected modulation of the startle reflex by emotional facial expressions only for subgroups of participants (i.e., women; Anokhin & Golosheykin, 2010), while others have failed to demonstrate the expected effect altogether (Alpers, Adolph, & Pauli, 2011). It has been argued that these inconsistent findings might relate to the nature of emotional expressions (Hess, Sabourin, & Kleck, 2007;Springer, Rosas, McGetrick, & Bowers, 2007): facial expressions of emotions do not only carry affective information but also a social message (see also Keltner & Haidt, 1999;Paulus & Wentura, 2013).…”