Increasing Recognition of Happiness in Ambiguous Facial Expressions Reduces Anger and Aggressive Behavior

Abstract

The ability to identify emotion in other people is critical to social functioning. In a series of experiments, we explored the relationship between recognition of emotion in ambiguous facial expressions and aggressive thoughts and behavior, both in healthy adults and in adolescent youth at high risk of criminal offending and delinquency. We show that it is possible to experimentally modify biases in emotion recognition to encourage the perception of happiness over anger in ambiguous expressions. This change in perception results in a decrease in self-reported anger and aggression in healthy adults and high-risk youth, respectively, and also in independently rated aggressive behavior in high-risk youth. We obtained similar effects on mood using two different techniques to modify biases in emotion perception (feedback-based training and visual adaptation). These studies provide strong evidence that emotion processing plays a causal role in anger and the maintenance of aggressive behavior.

An interactive training programme to treat body image disturbance

“…(2012) and Penton‐Voak et al . (2013) to run the training paradigm on a Windows PC with a 19″ LCD monitor panel (1,600 × 1,200 native pixel resolution, 32‐bit colour depth). Each trial of the baseline and training conditions began with a central fixation cross which was shown for 1,500–2,500 ms (randomly jittered).…”

“…This approach has been developed from a face training programme, used to modify biases in emotion recognition in order to encourage the perception of happiness over anger in ambiguous expressions in adolescents who are at high risk of criminal offending and delinquency (Penton‐Voak et al ., 2013). In the original study, participants were presented images of faces and had to make a two‐alternative forced choice (2‐AFC) decision whether a particular face was happy or angry.…”

“…Penton‐Voak et al . (2013) found that this resulted in a decrease in self‐reported anger and aggression and in independently rated aggressive behaviour. The same training algorithm has also been used to recalibrate the perception of happiness over sadness in ambiguous facial expressions in people reporting high levels of depressive symptoms to improve mood (Adams, Penton‐Voak, Harmer, Holmes, & Munafò, 2013; Penton‐Voak, Bate, Lewis, & Munafò, 2012).…”

“…Therefore, we tested the effectiveness of a modified version of the training paradigm from Penton‐Voak et al . (2013) to shift participants’ thin–fat categorical boundary and asked whether this shift would lead to a general improvement in body image concerns. It is important to emphasize that this is not the same as trying to train participants to achieve some fixed, normative goal, constituting a ‘normal’ body size.…”

Improved categorization of subtle facial expressions modulates Late Positive Potential

“…One such methodology is aimed at modifying perceptual biases in categorization of ambiguous facial expression. Perceptual biases in facial expression categorization have been associated with exposure and social experiences (e.g., Pollak et al, 2009) and have been observed in people with major depression (Joormann and Gottlieb, 2006), in abused children (Pollak et al, 2009;Da Silva Ferreira et al, 2014) and in adolescents at high risk of aggression and delinquency (Penton-Voak et al, 2013).…”