Nevrotisisme og Ansiktspersepsjon: En Kvantitativ Studie av Sammenhengen mellom Persepsjon av Ansiktsuttrykk og Grad av Nevrotisisme

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between facial emotion perception (bias and sensitivity) and degree of neuroticism. A limited amount of studies have been conducted in this area. Neuroticism is a possible risk factor for developing certain mental disorders (i.e. anxiety and depression). Studies conducted on clinical samples often report negative biases in the identification of emotional facial expressions, as well as a higher sensitivity to negative and a lower sensitivity to positive emotional facial expressions. Based on these findings we hypothesised that neurotic individuals would be prone to negative bias in the identification of emotional facial expressions. Secondly, we hypothesised that they would show greater sensitivity to negative, and lower sensitivity to positive emotional expressions. The participants performed an emotional recognition task where they were presented with neutral or emotional facial stimuli (anger, fear, sadness, happiness) over different emotional intensities (25%, 50%, 75%, 100%). Our results uncovered that higher degree of neuroticism predicts a greater tendency to misinterpret other emotional expressions at lower intensities (25% and 50%) as sad expressions. Further, the results showed that higher degree of neuroticism predicts lower sensitivity to fearful expressions. Possible implications of our findings are discussed.