Smile judgment in substance use disorders and its relationship to interpersonal and emotional functioning: An eye-tracking investigation

Abstract

The current study explored the judgments individuals with Substance Use Disorders (SUDs) make regarding the authenticity of enjoyment smile expressions and masking smile expressions containing traces of negative emotions. Accuracy at identifying the masked negative emotions were also examined. Eye-movements were recorded to observe relationships between attentional processes and smile judgment. Additionally, the relationship between smile judgment, emotion dysregulation, and interpersonal problems were also investigated. Twenty individuals with SUDs being treated from a local treatment center and twenty individuals matched on gender/age participated in the smile judgment task, which involved a smile expression characteristic of enjoyment and six smile expressions containing traces of either fear, disgust, anger in eyes, anger in mouth, sadness in eyes, and sadness in mouth. Results indicated that individuals with SUDs were no different in their categorization of the smiles. The lack of difference may be due to their previously observed biases at interpreting expressions as negative, as the results indicated that individuals with SUDs were significantly more likely to report the presence of negative emotions in the expressions. They were also more often incorrect in their identification of the masked emotions. No link was observed between smile judgment and attentional processes. Emotional and interpersonal functioning were related more to the ability to distinguish smile authenticity than the ability to identify masked emotions.

The role of emotion-related individual differences in enjoyment and masking smile judgment

“…However, identifying which negative emotion was being masked by the smiles proved to be a more difficult task, as shown from modest accuracy rates (between 20 and 50% accuracy). This has been the case with other studies of authenticity judgment and recognition of negative emotions in masking smile expressions as well (e.g., [ 23 , 40 ].…”

“…Further, we attempted to predict accuracy in smile authenticity judgment and recognition of negative emotions in masking smile expressions with each emotion ability variable (as in its own model and as a whole model) and examined relationships between accuracy at the judgment and recognition tasks and each emotion ability. The same judgment and recognition tasks used in Perron et al [ 42 ] and Pelot et al [ 40 ] were employed in the current study, except for measuring eye movements as they found that it was not a reliable indicator of task performance. As mentioned previously, emotional intelligence, emotional contagion, and emotional regulation have each been implicated in some way in our perception and recognition of emotions.…”

“…For instance, for the angry-eyes masking smile, greater accuracy would be expected to be associated with greater attention to the eye area, as this is the area where the trace of the negative emotion was presented. However, Perron et al [ 42 ] and Pelot et al [ 40 ] employed eye-tracking to their studies of judgment of authenticity and recognition of negative emotions in masking smiles and found no relationship between perceptual-attentional processes and smile judgment or recognition. These results indicate that the perceptual-attentional limitations hypothesis does not consistently explain differences in the judgment of authenticity and recognition of negative emotions in these expressions.…”

“…Furthermore, amongst individual differences, various emotion-related differences have also been documented as important in our perception and judgment of masking smiles and the authenticity of smiles. For instance, Pelot et al [ 40 ] found significant negative correlations between difficulties in emotion regulation scores and accuracy at smile authenticity judgment of enjoyment and masking smiles in individuals from the general population with substance use disorders. However, this study found that the relationships between emotion regulation and smile judgment and emotion recognition were inconsistent and varied as a function of group, smile type, and subscale.…”

Emotion regulation in substance use disorders: a systematic review and meta‐analysis

“…Of these, 14 failed to meet inclusion criteria [ 16 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 ]; reasons for study exclusion can be found in Supporting information, Table S1.1 . We were left with 22 studies to be included for the primary analysis [ 17 , 27 , 33 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 ]. A summary of the systematic review search process is shown in Figure 1 (PRISMA flow‐chart).…”