Should I trust you? Investigating trustworthiness judgements of painful facial expressions
Past research indicates that patients' reports of pain are often met with skepticism and that observers tend to underestimate patients' pain. The mechanisms behind these biases are not yet fully understood. One relevant domain of inquiry is the interaction between the emotional valence of...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Elsevier
2023-05-01
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| Series: | Acta Psychologica |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691823000690 |
| _version_ | 1827979978860396544 |
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| author | Mathias Van der Biest Emiel Cracco Paolo Riva Elia Valentini |
| author_facet | Mathias Van der Biest Emiel Cracco Paolo Riva Elia Valentini |
| author_sort | Mathias Van der Biest |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Past research indicates that patients' reports of pain are often met with skepticism and that observers tend to underestimate patients' pain. The mechanisms behind these biases are not yet fully understood. One relevant domain of inquiry is the interaction between the emotional valence of a stranger's expression and the onlooker's trustworthiness judgment. The emotion overgeneralization hypothesis posits that when facial cues of valence are clear, individuals displaying negative expressions (e.g., disgust) are perceived as less trustworthy than those showing positive facial expressions (e.g., happiness). Accordingly, we hypothesized that facial expressions of pain (like disgust) would be judged more untrustworthy than facial expressions of happiness. In two separate studies, we measured trustworthiness judgments of four different facial expressions (i.e., neutral, happiness, pain, and disgust), displayed by both computer-generated and real faces, via both explicit self-reported ratings (Study 1) and implicit motor trajectories in a trustworthiness categorization task (Study 2). Ratings and categorization findings partly support our hypotheses. Our results reveal for the first time that when judging strangers' facial expressions, both negative expressions were perceived as more untrustworthy than happy expressions. They also indicate that facial expressions of pain are perceived as untrustworthy as disgust expressions, at least for computer-generated faces. These findings are relevant to the clinical setting because they highlight how overgeneralization of emotional facial expressions may subtend an early perceptual bias exerted by the patient's emotional facial cues onto the clinician's cognitive appraisal process. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-09T21:45:18Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-27b19c35e33141fb86da64be2faeeff6 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 0001-6918 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-09T21:45:18Z |
| publishDate | 2023-05-01 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Acta Psychologica |
| spelling | doaj.art-27b19c35e33141fb86da64be2faeeff62023-03-25T05:10:14ZengElsevierActa Psychologica0001-69182023-05-01235103893Should I trust you? Investigating trustworthiness judgements of painful facial expressionsMathias Van der Biest0Emiel Cracco1Paolo Riva2Elia Valentini3Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Ghent, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent, BelgiumDepartment of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, University of Ghent, Ghent, BelgiumDepartment of Psychology, University of Milano–Bicocca, Milan, ItalyDepartment of Psychology and Centre for Brain Science, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom; Corresponding author at: Centre for Brain Science, Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, United Kingdom.Past research indicates that patients' reports of pain are often met with skepticism and that observers tend to underestimate patients' pain. The mechanisms behind these biases are not yet fully understood. One relevant domain of inquiry is the interaction between the emotional valence of a stranger's expression and the onlooker's trustworthiness judgment. The emotion overgeneralization hypothesis posits that when facial cues of valence are clear, individuals displaying negative expressions (e.g., disgust) are perceived as less trustworthy than those showing positive facial expressions (e.g., happiness). Accordingly, we hypothesized that facial expressions of pain (like disgust) would be judged more untrustworthy than facial expressions of happiness. In two separate studies, we measured trustworthiness judgments of four different facial expressions (i.e., neutral, happiness, pain, and disgust), displayed by both computer-generated and real faces, via both explicit self-reported ratings (Study 1) and implicit motor trajectories in a trustworthiness categorization task (Study 2). Ratings and categorization findings partly support our hypotheses. Our results reveal for the first time that when judging strangers' facial expressions, both negative expressions were perceived as more untrustworthy than happy expressions. They also indicate that facial expressions of pain are perceived as untrustworthy as disgust expressions, at least for computer-generated faces. These findings are relevant to the clinical setting because they highlight how overgeneralization of emotional facial expressions may subtend an early perceptual bias exerted by the patient's emotional facial cues onto the clinician's cognitive appraisal process.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691823000690TrustworthinessPain perceptionMouse tracking |
| spellingShingle | Mathias Van der Biest Emiel Cracco Paolo Riva Elia Valentini Should I trust you? Investigating trustworthiness judgements of painful facial expressions Acta Psychologica Trustworthiness Pain perception Mouse tracking |
| title | Should I trust you? Investigating trustworthiness judgements of painful facial expressions |
| title_full | Should I trust you? Investigating trustworthiness judgements of painful facial expressions |
| title_fullStr | Should I trust you? Investigating trustworthiness judgements of painful facial expressions |
| title_full_unstemmed | Should I trust you? Investigating trustworthiness judgements of painful facial expressions |
| title_short | Should I trust you? Investigating trustworthiness judgements of painful facial expressions |
| title_sort | should i trust you investigating trustworthiness judgements of painful facial expressions |
| topic | Trustworthiness Pain perception Mouse tracking |
| url | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691823000690 |
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