Social appraisal influences recognition of emotions.

Abstract

The notion of social appraisal emphasizes the importance of a social dimension in appraisal theories of emotion by proposing that the way an individual appraises an event is influenced by the way other individuals appraise and feel about the same event. This study directly tested this proposal by asking participants to recognize dynamic facial expressions of emotion (fear, happiness, or anger in Experiment 1; fear, happiness, anger, or neutral in Experiment 2) in a target face presented at the center of a screen while a contextual face, which appeared simultaneously in the periphery of the screen, expressed an emotion (fear, happiness, anger) or not (neutral) and either looked at the target face or not. We manipulated gaze direction to be able to distinguish between a mere contextual effect (gaze away from both the target face and the participant) and a specific social appraisal effect (gaze toward the target face). Results of both experiments provided evidence for a social appraisal effect in emotion recognition, which differed from the mere effect of contextual information: Whereas facial expressions were identical in both conditions, the direction of the gaze of the contextual face influenced emotion recognition. Social appraisal facilitated the recognition of anger, happiness, and fear when the contextual face expressed the same emotion. This facilitation was stronger than the mere contextual effect. Social appraisal also allowed better recognition of fear when the contextual face expressed anger and better recognition of anger when the contextual face expressed fear.

At-Risk Teachers: The Association Between Burnout Levels and Emotional Appraisal Processes

“…In line with such findings, some authors have found that individuals decide how to react and respond to social situations according to their perceptions of others' facial expressions and past experiences with them [16,17].…”

Social Referencing: Defining and Delineating a Basic Process of Emotion

“…Additionally, one's perception of emotionally relevant stimuli (e.g., faces) is also influenced by a social partner's facial expression and gaze direction. Mumenthaler and Sander (2012) demonstrated that participants' recognition of a target fear face was facilitated by the presence of a second face looking toward the target face while expressing anger. A key element for discriminating or uniting the terms social referencing and social appraisal lies in the outcome for the individual, specifically whether one's own emotional experience, be it operationalized as appraisal or behavior, is affected by the emotional communication of the social other.…”

“…Similarly, Hornik et al (1987) describe "the infant form [ing] an appraisal of novel events based on the mother's affective reaction" (p. 943). Furthermore, studies of both terms indicate that the communication of the social partner may be ostensive (e.g., Parkinson et al, 2012;Sorce et al, 1985), but that this is not criterial (e.g., Boccia & Campos, 1989;de Rosnay, Cooper, Tsigaras, & Murray, 2006;Mumenthaler & Sander, 2012). Rather, the processes are characterized by the motivation of the individual seeking emotional information, not the motivation of the individual being referenced.…”

“…For example, children from physically abusive homes recognize more subtle expressions of anger than children from nonabusive homes (Pollak, Messner, Kistler, & Cohn, 2009;Pollak & Sinha, 2002). Differences in exposure and sensitivity to emotional communication could account for differences in social referencing tasks, particularly for those exposing the participant to emotional communication at an unconscious level (e.g., Mumenthaler & Sander, 2012. Furthermore, research is sorely needed to examine how the individual is affected by emotions of varying quality (e.g., anger, disgust, awe, contentment, contempt).…”

“…Adult participants are able to focus on standardized paper or computer tasks, introspect on current or past emotional and social experiences, maintain attention on repeated trials, and tolerate being stationary in a scanner. As such, researchers of social appraisal often utilize measures of self-report (e.g., Jakobs et al, 1999), as well as implicit cognition (e.g., Mumenthaler & Sander, 2012) and neural activation (e.g., Vrtička, Andersson, Grandjean, Sander, & Vuilleumier, 2008). Infants, on the other hand, have limited attentional abilities, minimal (if any) verbal capabilities, and very poor penmanship.…”