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Although a smile can serve as an expression of genuine happiness, it can also be generated to conceal negative emotions. The traces of negative emotion present in these types of smiles can produce micro-expressions, subtle movements of the facial muscles manifested in the upper or lower half of the face. Studies examining the judgment of smiles masking negative emotions have mostly employed dichotomous rating measures, while also assuming that dichotomous categorization of a smile as happy or not is synonymous with judgments of the smile's authenticity. The aim of the two studies was to explore the judgment of enjoyment and masking smiles using unipolar and bipolar continuous rating measures and examine differences in the judgment when instruction varied between judgments of happiness and authenticity. In Experiment 1, participants rated smiles on 7-point scales on perceived happiness and authenticity. In Experiment 2, participants rated the smiles on bipolar 7-point scales between happiness and a negative emotion label. In both studies, similar patterns were observed: faces with traces of fear were rated significantly less happy/authentic and those with traces of anger in the brows were rated significantly happier/more authentic. Regarding varied instruction type, no effect was found for the two instruction types, indicating that participants perceive and judge enjoyment and masking smiles similarly according to these two instructions. Additionally, the use of bipolar scales with dimensions between a negative emotion label and happiness were not consistently effective in influencing the judgement of the masking smile.

Our study examined the role of instructions, response type, and definition on the judgement of enjoyment and nonenjoyment smiles. Participants viewed symmetric Duchenne, non-Duchenne, and asymmetric smiles. They were instructed to judge the happiness, authenticity, and sincerity of the smiles using either Likert scales or a dichotomous response type. Participants were also either given a definition of the instruction words "happy," "authentic," and "sincere" or not. Results showed that the probability of saying "really (happy/sincere/authentic)" was higher for the symmetric Duchenne than the asymmetric smiles and higher for the asymmetric than non-Duchenne smiles. Changing the instructions given to participants did not override the effect of smile type with the use of Likert scale or dichotomous response. However, with the use of Likert scale, we observed subtilities that were not observed with the use of dichotomous response. When given a definition, in the case of symmetric non-Duchenne smiles, Likert ratings were significantly lower, and participants were more accurate in their judgement on the dichotomous scale. However, no differences were observed for the asymmetric Duchenne and symmetric Duchenne smiles whether a definition was given or not. Symmetric non-Duchenne and asymmetric Duchenne smiles were also viewed longer when a definition was given than when one was not. Nevertheless, considering methodological variations of our study failed to explain the variations in the pattern of results of previous studies, other avenues should be explored, such as the use of dynamic stimuli and a greater variety of encoders. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

According to the perceptual-attentional limitations hypothesis, the confusion between expressions of disgust and anger may be due to the difficulty in perceptually distinguishing the two, or insufficient attention to their distinctive cues. The objective of the current study was to test this hypothesis as an explanation for the confusion between expressions of disgust and anger in adults using eye-movements. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to identify each emotion in 96 trials composed of prototypes of anger and prototypes of disgust. In Experiment 2, fixation points oriented participants' attention toward the eyes, the nose, or the mouth of each prototype. Results revealed that disgust was less accurately recognised than anger (Experiment 1 and 2), especially when the mouth was open (Experiment 1 and 2), and even when attention was oriented toward the distinctive features of disgust (Experiment 2). Additionally, when attention was oriented toward certain zones, the eyes (which contain characteristics of anger) had the longest dwell times, followed by the nose (which contains characteristics of disgust; Experiment 2). Thus, although participants may attend to the distinguishing features of disgust and anger, these may not aid them in accurately recognising each prototype.

Background: While some research indicates that individuals can accurately judge smile authenticity of enjoyment and masking smile expressions, other research suggest modest judgment rates of masking smiles. The current study explored the role of emotion-related individual differences in the judgment of authenticity and recognition of negative emotions in enjoyment and masking smile expressions as a potential explanation for the differences observed., Methods: Specifically, Experiment 1 investigated the role of emotion contagion (Doherty in J Nonverbal Behav 21:131-154, 1997), emotion intelligence (Schutte et al. in Personality Individ Differ 25:167-177, 1998), and emotion regulation (Gratz and Roemer in J Psychopathol Behav Assess 26:41-54, 2004) in smile authenticity judgment and recognition of negative emotions in masking smiles. Experiment 2 investigated the role of state and trait anxiety (Spielberger et al. in Manual for the state-trait anxiety inventory, Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto, 1983) in smile authenticity judgment and recognition of negative emotions in the same masking smiles. In both experiments, repeated measures ANOVAs were conducted for judgment of authenticity, probability of producing the expected response, for the detection of another emotion, and for emotion recognition. A series of correlations were also calculated between the proportion of expected responses of smile judgement and the scores on the different subscales., Results: Results of the smile judgment and recognition tasks were replicated in both studies, and echoed results from prior studies of masking smile judgment: participants rated enjoyment smiles as happier than the masking smiles and, of the masking smiles, participants responded "really happy" more often for the angry-eyes masking smiles and more often categorized fear masking smiles as "not really happy"., Conclusions: Overall, while the emotion-related individual differences used in our study seem to have an impact on recognition of basic emotions in the literature, our study suggest that these traits, except for emotional awareness, do not predict performances on the judgment of complex expressions such as masking smiles. These results provide further information regarding the factors that do and do not contribute to greater judgment of smile authenticity and recognition of negative emotions in masking smiles., (© 2023. The Author(s).)