Seeing Yourself Helps You See Others

It has been proposed that self-face representations are involved in interpreting facial emotions of others. We experimentally primed participants' self-face representations. In Study 1, we assessed eye tracking patterns and performance on a facial emotion discrimination task, and in Study 2, we...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Emotion (Washington, D.C.) D.C.), 2011-10, Vol.11 (5), p.1235-1241
Main Authors: YUAN HANG LI, TOTTENHAM, Nim
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Affect
Affectivity. Emotion
Biological and medical sciences
Discrimination (Psychology)
Emotions
Eye Movements
Facial Expression
Facial Expressions
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Male
Personality. Affectivity
Priming
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Self-Perception
Social Perception
Surveys and Questionnaires
Young Adult
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Description
Summary:It has been proposed that self-face representations are involved in interpreting facial emotions of others. We experimentally primed participants' self-face representations. In Study 1, we assessed eye tracking patterns and performance on a facial emotion discrimination task, and in Study 2, we assessed emotion ratings between self and nonself groups. Results show that experimental priming of self-face representations increases visual exploration of faces, facilitates the speed of facial expression processing, and increases the emotional distance between expressions. These findings suggest that the ability to interpret facial expressions of others is intimately associated with the representations we have of our own faces.
ISSN:1528-3542
1931-1516
DOI:10.1037/a0023469