Self-Rated Confidence in Vocal Emotion Recognition Ability: The Role of Gender

PURPOSE

We studied the role of gender in metacognition of voice emotion recognition ability (ERA), reflected by self-rated confidence (SRC). To this end, we guided our study in two approaches: first, by examining the role of gender in voice ERA and SRC independently and second, by looking for gender effects on the ERA association with SRC.

METHOD

We asked 100 participants (50 men, 50 women) to interpret a set of vocal expressions portrayed by 30 actors (16 men, 14 women) as defined by their emotional meaning. Targets were 180 repetitive lexical sentences articulated in congruent emotional voices (anger, sadness, surprise, happiness, fear) and neutral expressions. Trial by trial, the participants were assigned retrospective SRC based on their emotional recognition performance.

RESULTS

A binomial generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) estimating ERA accuracy revealed a significant gender effect, with women encoders (speakers) yielding higher accuracy levels than men. There was no significant effect of the decoder's (listener's) gender. A second GLMM estimating SRC found a significant effect of encoder and decoder genders, with women outperforming men. Gamma correlations were significantly greater than zero for women and men decoders.

CONCLUSIONS

In spite of varying interpretations of gender in each independent rating (ERA and SRC), our results suggest that both men and women decoders were accurate in their metacognition regarding voice emotion recognition. Further research is needed to study how individuals of both genders use metacognitive knowledge in their emotional recognition and whether and how such knowledge contributes to effective social communication.

Does the interplay of emotion-related personality traits and reproductive hormones predict individual variation in emotion recognition?

Person-related variation has been identified in many socio-cognitive domains, and there is evidence for links between certain personality traits and individual emotion recognition. Some studies, utilizing the menstrual cycle as a hormonal model, attempted to demonstrate that hormonal fluctuations could predict variations in emotion recognition, but with merely inconsistent findings. Remarkably, the interplay between hormone fluctuations and other person-related factors that could potentially influence emotion recognition remains understudied. In the current study, we examined if the interactions of emotion-related personality traits, namely openness, extraversion, and neuroticism, and the ovulatory cycle predict individual variation in facial emotion recognition in healthy naturally cycling women. We collected salivary ovarian hormones measures from N = 129 (n = 72 validated via LH test) women across their late follicular and mid-luteal phases of the ovulatory cycle. The results revealed a negative association between neuroticism scores and emotion recognition when progesterone levels (within-subject) were elevated. However, the results did not indicate a significant moderating influence of neuroticism, openness, and extraversion on emotion recognition across phases (late follicular vs. mid-luteal) of the menstrual cycle. Additionally, there was no significant interaction between openness or extraversion and ovarian hormone levels in predicting facial emotion recognition. The current study suggests future lines of research to compare these findings in a clinical setting, as both neuroticism and ovarian hormone dysregulation are associated with some psychiatric disorders such as premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD).

Seeing emotions in the eyes: a validated test to study individual differences in the perception of basic emotions

People are able to perceive emotions in the eyes of others and can therefore see emotions when individuals wear face masks. Research has been hampered by the lack of a good test to measure basic emotions in the eyes. In two studies respectively with 358 and 200 participants, we developed a test to see anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise in images of eyes. Each emotion is measured with 8 stimuli (4 male actors and 4 female actors), matched in terms of difficulty and item discrimination. Participants reliably differed in their performance on the Seeing Emotions in the Eyes test (SEE-48). The test correlated well not only with Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) but also with the Situational Test of Emotion Understanding (STEU), indicating that the SEE-48 not only measures low-level perceptual skills but also broader skills of emotion perception and emotional intelligence. The test is freely available for research and clinical purposes.

Emotional intelligence and emotion information processing: Proof of concept of a test measuring accuracy in discriminating emotions

Emotion information processing (EI_P) has been recently introduced as a new component of emotional intelligence. We present a task aiming at measuring a type of emotion information processing related to fine-grained discrimination of emotional expressions. We modified an existing task presenting morphed faces created from a blend of two prototypical emotional expressions. Participants' (N = 154) ability-EI, in particular emotion recognition, understanding and management, as well as intelligence were evaluated. Results show that all facets of EI independently predicted accuracy in the discrimination task and that emotion recognition was the strongest predictor. When controlling for emotion recognition level, we found that emotion understanding still predicted accuracy for less difficult stimuli. Results support the idea that individuals high in EI have higher emotion processing skills at the emotion perception stage of information processing and suggest that the task employed in the current study might measure more spontaneous processing of emotional expressions. Implications regarding the use of the current task as a new measure of the EI_P component are discussed.

The relationship between medical students' empathy, mental health, and burnout: A cross-sectional study

OBJECTIVE

To investigate how medical students' empathy is related to their mental health and burnout.

METHODS

This cross-sectional study included 886 medical students from curriculum years 1-6. The cognitive, affective, and behavioural dimensions of empathy were measured with self-report questionnaires and an emotion recognition test. Regressions were used to test the relationship between the empathy dimensions, depressive symptoms, anxiety, and burnout as well as the influence of curriculum year and gender.

RESULTS

Cognitive and behavioural empathy were significantly related to less mental health issues and burnout, whereas affective empathy was related to more mental health issues and burnout. Students in later curriculum years reported less mental health issues and burnout than students in earlier years, whereas no systematic difference could be observed for empathy. Female students reported more mental health issues and burnout as well as higher empathy, except for behavioural empathy for which male students scored higher.

CONCLUSIONS

The cognitive, affective, and behavioural dimensions of empathy were differently related to the mental health and burnout of medical students. Students presenting mental health issues or burnout might have more difficulty to adapt their behaviour in social situations and keep a certain distance when taking others' perspective.

Social anxiety and behavioral assessments of social cognition: A systematic review

BACKGROUND

Social anxiety is highly prevalent and has increased in young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since social anxiety negatively impacts interpersonal functioning, identifying aspects of social cognition that may be impaired can increase our understanding of the development and maintenance of social anxiety disorder. However, to date, studies examining associations between social anxiety and social cognition have resulted in mixed findings.

METHODS

The aim of this systematic review was to summarize the literature on the association between social anxiety and social cognition, while also considering several potential moderators and covariates that may influence findings.

RESULTS

A systematic search identified 52 studies. Results showed mixed evidence for the association between social anxiety and lower-level social cognitive processes (emotion recognition and affect sharing) and a trend for a negative association with higher-level social cognitive processes (theory of mind and empathic accuracy). Most studies examining valence-specific effects found a significant negative association for positive and neutral stimuli.

LIMITATIONS

Not all aspects of social cognition were included (e.g., attributional bias) and we focused on adults and not children, limiting the scope of the review.

CONCLUSIONS

Future studies would benefit from the inclusion of relevant moderators and covariates, multiple well-validated measures within the same domain of social cognition, and assessments of interpersonal functioning outside of the laboratory. Additional research examining the moderating role of attention or interpretation biases on social cognitive performance, and the potential benefit of social cognitive skills training for social anxiety, could inform and improve existing cognitive behavioral interventions.

Assessing Emotional Intelligence Abilities, Acquiescent and Extreme Responding in Situational Judgment Tests Using Principal Component Metrics

Principal Component Metrics is a novel theoretically-based and data-driven methodology that enables the evaluation of the internal structure at item level of maximum emotional intelligence tests. This method disentangles interindividual differences in emotional ability from acquiescent and extreme responding. Principal Component Metrics are applied to existing (Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test) and assembled (specifically, the Situational Test of Emotion Understanding, the Situational Test of Emotion Management, and the Geneva Emotion Recognition Test) emotional intelligence test batteries in an analysis of three samples (total N = 2,303 participants). In undertaking these analyses important aspects of the nomological network of emotional intelligence, acquiescent, and extreme responding are investigated. The current study adds a central piece of empirical validity evidence to the emotional intelligence domain. In the three different samples, theoretically predicted internal structures at item level were found using raw item scores. The validity of the indicators for emotional intelligence, acquiescent, and extreme responding was confirmed by their relationships across emotional intelligence tests and by their nomological networks. The current findings contribute to evaluating the efficacy of the emotional intelligence construct as well as the validity evidence surrounding the instruments that are currently designed for its assessment, in the process opening new perspectives for analyzing existing and constructing new emotional intelligence tests.

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

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.

Investigating individual differences in emotion recognition ability using the ERAM test

Individuals vary in emotion recognition ability (ERA), but the causes and correlates of this variability are not well understood. Previous studies have largely focused on unimodal facial or vocal expressions and a small number of emotion categories, which may not reflect how emotions are expressed in everyday interactions. We investigated individual differences in ERA using a brief test containing dynamic multimodal (facial and vocal) expressions of 5 positive and 7 negative emotions (the ERAM test). Study 1 (N = 593) showed that ERA was positively correlated with emotional understanding, empathy, and openness, and negatively correlated with alexithymia. Women also had higher ERA than men. Study 2 was conducted online and replicated the recognition rates from Study 1 (which was conducted in lab) in a different sample (N = 106). Study 2 also showed that participants who had higher ERA were more accurate in their meta-cognitive judgments about their own accuracy. Recognition rates for visual, auditory, and audio-visual expressions were substantially correlated in both studies. Results provide further clues about the underlying structure of ERA and its links to broader affective processes. The ERAM test can be used for both lab and online research, and is freely available for academic research.

The Good, the Bad, and the Clever: Faking Ability as a Socio-Emotional Ability?

Socio-emotional abilities have been proposed as an extension to models of intelligence, but earlier measurement approaches have either not fulfilled criteria of ability measurement or have covered only predominantly receptive abilities. We argue that faking ability-the ability to adjust responses on questionnaires to present oneself in a desired manner-is a socio-emotional ability that can broaden our understanding of these abilities and intelligence in general. To test this theory, we developed new instruments to measure the ability to fake bad (malingering) and administered them jointly with established tests of faking good ability in a general sample of n = 134. Participants also completed multiple tests of emotion perception along with tests of emotion expression posing, pain expression regulation, and working memory capacity. We found that individual differences in faking ability tests are best explained by a general factor that had a large correlation with receptive socio-emotional abilities and had a zero to medium-sized correlation with different productive socio-emotional abilities. All correlations were still small after controlling these effects for shared variance with general mental ability as indicated by tests of working memory capacity. We conclude that faking ability is indeed correlated meaningfully with other socio-emotional abilities and discuss the implications for intelligence research and applied ability assessment.

Promotion of mental health in young adults via mobile phone app: study protocol of the ECoWeB (emotional competence for well-being in Young adults) cohort multiple randomised trials

BACKGROUND

Promoting well-being and preventing poor mental health in young people is a major global priority. Building emotional competence (EC) skills via a mobile app may be an effective, scalable and acceptable way to do this. However, few large-scale controlled trials have examined the efficacy of mobile apps in promoting mental health in young people; none have tailored the app to individual profiles.

METHOD/DESIGN

The Emotional Competence for Well-Being in Young Adults cohort multiple randomised controlled trial (cmRCT) involves a longitudinal prospective cohort to examine well-being, mental health and EC in 16-22 year olds across 12 months. Within the cohort, eligible participants are entered to either the PREVENT trial (if selected EC scores at baseline within worst-performing quartile) or to the PROMOTE trial (if selected EC scores not within worst-performing quartile). In both trials, participants are randomised (i) to continue with usual practice, repeated assessments and a self-monitoring app; (ii) to additionally receive generic cognitive-behavioural therapy self-help in app; (iii) to additionally receive personalised EC self-help in app. In total, 2142 participants aged 16 to 22 years, with no current or past history of major depression, bipolar disorder or psychosis will be recruited across UK, Germany, Spain, and Belgium. Assessments take place at baseline (pre-randomisation), 1, 3 and 12 months post-randomisation. Primary endpoint and outcome for PREVENT is level of depression symptoms on the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 at 3 months; primary endpoint and outcome for PROMOTE is emotional well-being assessed on the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale at 3 months. Depressive symptoms, anxiety, well-being, health-related quality of life, functioning and cost-effectiveness are secondary outcomes. Compliance, adverse events and potentially mediating variables will be carefully monitored.

CONCLUSIONS

The trial aims to provide a better understanding of the causal role of learning EC skills using interventions delivered via mobile phone apps with respect to promoting well-being and preventing poor mental health in young people. This knowledge will be used to develop and disseminate innovative evidence-based, feasible, and effective Mobile-health public health strategies for preventing poor mental health and promoting well-being.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

ClinicalTrials.gov ( www.clinicaltrials.org ). Number of identification: NCT04148508 November 2019.

Accuracy in Judging Others' Personalities: The Role of Emotion Recognition, Emotion Understanding, and Trait Emotional Intelligence

The ability to accurately judge others’ personality and the ability to accurately recognize others’ emotions are both part of the broader construct of interpersonal accuracy (IPA). However, little research has examined the association between these two IPA domains. Little is also known about the relationship between personality judgment accuracy and other socio-emotional skills and traits. In the present study, 121 participants judged eight traits (Big Five, intelligence, cooperativeness, and empathy) in each of 30 targets who were presented either in a photograph, a muted video, or a video with sound. The videos were 30 second excerpts from negotiations that the targets had engaged in. Participants also completed standard tests of emotion recognition ability, emotion understanding, and trait emotional intelligence. Results showed that personality judgment accuracy, when indexed as trait accuracy and distinctive profile accuracy, positively correlated with emotion recognition ability and was unrelated to emotion understanding and trait emotional intelligence. Female participants were more accurate in judging targets’ personality than men. These results provide support for IPA as a set of correlated domain-specific skills and encourage further research on personality judgment accuracy as a meaningful individual difference variable.

Improving emotion recognition in anorexia nervosa: An experimental proof-of-concept study

OBJECTIVE

Previous research has found increasing evidence for difficulties in emotion recognition ability (ERA) and social cognition in anorexia nervosa (AN), and recent models consider these factors to contribute to the development and maintenance of the disorder. However, there is a lack of experimental studies testing this hypothesis. Therefore, the present proof-of-concept study examined whether ERA can be improved by a single session of a computerized training in AN, and whether this has short-term effects on eating disorder symptoms.

METHOD

Forty inpatients (22.20 ± 7.15 years) with AN were randomly assigned to receive a single session of computerized training of ERA (TERA) or a sham training (training the recognition of different types of clouds). ERA, self-reported eating disorder symptoms, and body mass index (BMI) were assessed within 3 days before and after training.

RESULTS

After training, both groups showed improved ERA, reduced self-reported eating disorder symptoms, and an increased BMI. As compared to patients in the control group, patients who received TERA showed greater improvements in ERA and self-reported eating disorder symptoms.

DISCUSSION

ERA can be effectively trained in patients with AN. Moreover, short-term improvements in self-reported eating disorder symptoms provide tentative support for the hypothesis that difficulties in ERA contribute to the maintenance of AN, and that specific trainings of ERA hold promise as an additional component in AN treatment. Future studies are needed to replicate these findings in larger samples, and to investigate long-term effects and transfer into real-world settings.

A meta-analysis of the relationship between emotion recognition ability and intelligence

The ability to recognise others' emotions from nonverbal cues (emotion recognition ability, ERA) is measured with performance-based tests and has many positive correlates. Although researchers have long proposed that ERA is related to general mental ability or intelligence, a comprehensive analysis of this relationship is lacking. For instance, it remains unknown whether the magnitude of the association varies by intelligence type, ERA test features, as well as demographic variables. The present meta-analysis examined the relationship between ERA and intelligence based on 471 effect sizes from 133 samples and found a significant mean effect size (controlled for nesting within samples) of r = .19. Different intelligence types (crystallized, fluid, spatial, memory, information processing speed and efficiency) yielded similar effect sizes, whereas academic achievement measures (e.g. SAT scores) were unrelated to ERA. Effect sizes were higher for ERA tests that simultaneously present facial, vocal, and bodily cues (as compared to tests using static pictures) and for tests with higher reliability and more emotions. Results were unaffected by most study and sample characteristics, but effect size increased with higher mean age of the sample. These findings establish ERA as sensory-cognitive ability that is distinct from, yet related to, intelligence.

Relations Between Dimensions of Emotional Intelligence, Specific Aspects of Empathy, and Non-verbal Sensitivity

In this work, on the one hand, we examined the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and empathy and, on the other, the relationship between EI and non-verbal sensitivity, through two independent studies. The first study analyzed the relationship between dimensions of EI and aspects of empathy, in a sample of 856 participants who completed two measures of EI, the trait meta-mood scale (TMMS) and the trait emotional intelligence questionnaire (TEIQue), and a measure of empathy, the interpersonal reactivity index (IRI). The results showed a similar pattern of significant positive relations in all the EI domains with empathic perspective-taking (PT), and significant negative relationships with empathic personal distress (PD), except for the EI domain of attention, which had a positive relationship. Stepwise multiple regression analyses showed that the dimension that best predicted empathic PT and empathic concern (EC) was the emotionality factor; whereas attention best predicted empathic fantasy; and the self-control factor best predicted PD, although negatively. Gender emerged as a predictor of three empathic aspects, fantasy, EC, and PD, with women obtaining higher scores than men in all of them. Age was the only predictor of fantasy, with a negative relationship. The second study involved 646 people who completed the same measures of EI as the participants of the first study and the mini-profile of non-verbal sensitivity (Mini-PONS). The results showed some significant relationships between EI dimensions and the channels and quadrants of the MiniPONS. Stepwise multiple regression analyses showed that very few EI dimensions predicted non-verbal sensitivity, with attention obtaining the best result. Both gender and age emerged as predictors, some in unique cases, of channels, quadrants, and of the total score of non-verbal sensitivity; age had a negative relationship, and women obtained higher scores than men.

Intelligence and Sensory Sensitivity as Predictors of Emotion Recognition Ability

The ability to recognize emotions from nonverbal cues (emotion recognition ability, ERA) is a core component of emotional intelligence, which has recently been conceptualized as a second-stratum factor of intelligence (MacCann et al., 2014). However, only few studies have empirically investigated the link between ERA, intelligence, and other mental abilities. The present study examined the associations between ERA, fluid intelligence, and sensory sensitivity in a sample of 214 participants. Results showed that both fluid intelligence and sensory sensitivity explained unique portions of variance in ERA. These findings suggest that future studies on ERA should include intelligence measures to assess the incremental validity of ERA above and beyond intelligence.