The Effect of Emotional State and Dispositional Joy on the Speed of Emotion Recognition from Facial Expression (in Russian)

Abstract

Previous works show that mood congruence effect or trait congruence effect can be achieved (Chepenik  et al., 2007; Rusting, 1998). The present study explores the effect of emotional state and dispositional joy on effectiveness of emotion recognition from facial expression. The experimental study was conducted in two groups of subjects. The general sample consisted of 39 participants. Participants’ emotional state was measured with the self-report questionnaire PANAS. The participants’ current mood was manipulated with the emotion induction procedure, which involved screening video with “joyful” or “neutral” emotional coloring. To measure the speed of emotional information processing a computer technique was used, in which a participant performed the task on emotion recognition from facial expression. The hypothesis was tested whether there is an effect of congruency in positive information processing. It was supposed that positive emotional state and dispositional joy heighten the speed of positive information processing and don’t influence processing of the stimuli with negative emotional coloring. Testing of the emotion induction procedure proved it to be partially successful. Congruency effect for dispositional joy was achieved: we found an interrelation of higher manifestation of this trait with higher speed in joy recognition from facial expressions. The influence of positive emotional state was manifested in lower speed in recognition of joy. In sum, the results show that the congruency effect is expressed differently for trait and emotional state. Overall, the results of the conducted study provide information on the mechanisms of emotion recognition.