Seeing mixed emotions: Alexithymia, emotion perception bias, and quality in dyadic interactions

Narcissism predicts noise perception but not signal decoding in emotion

Grandiose narcissists claim that they have better-than-average emotion recognition abilities, but many objective tests do not support this claim. We sought to clarify the relation between grandiose (both agentic and communal) narcissism and emotion recognition by taking a closer look at the components of emotion recognition. In two studies (N1 = 147, N2 = 520), using culturally distinct samples and different stimulus materials, we investigated the relation between grandiose narcissism and signal decoding (accurate view of the intended emotion displayed in an expression) as well as noise perception (inaccurate deciphering of secondary emotions that are not part of the emotional message). Narcissism was inconsistently related to signal decoding, but consistently and positively related to noise perception. High grandiose (agentic and communal) narcissists are not necessarily better at signal decoding, but are more susceptible to noise perception. We discuss implications for narcissists' social interactions and interpersonal relationships.

Reconceptualizing Emotion Recognition Ability

Emotion decoding accuracy (EDA) plays a central role within the emotional intelligence (EI) ability model. The EI-ability perspective typically assumes personality antecedents and social outcomes of EI abilities, yet, traditionally, there has been very limited research to support this contention. The present paper argues that the way in which EDA has been conceptualized and operationalized in EI research has ignored developments in social perception theory and research. These developments point, on one hand, to the importance of embedding emotion expressions in a social context and, on the other, to reformulating the definitions of emotion decoding accuracy. The present paper outlines the importance of context in the framework of a truth and bias model of the social perception of emotions (Assessment of Contextualized Emotions, ACE) for EI abilities.

Age similarities in the anchoring effect in emotion intensity judgment

BACKGROUND

The anchoring effect refers to the tendency that an individual's numerical judgment would assimilate to an anchor (a numerical value) that appears before that judgment. This study investigated whether the anchoring effect exists in the emotion judgment of younger and older adults and observed the age-related characteristics. This could not only broaden the explanation of the anchoring effect but also link this classic judgment bias with daily emotion judgment to refresh our understanding of older adults' ability in emotional perspective taking.

METHOD

Participants (older adults: n = 64, age range: 60-74, 27 males; younger adults: n = 68, age range: 18-34, 34 males) read a brief emotional story and compared the protagonist's emotion intensity to a given numerical anchor (lower or higher than the anchor) and then estimated the protagonist's possible emotion intensity in that story. The task was divided into two cases according to anchor relevance (anchors are relevant or irrelevant relative to the judgment target).

RESULTS

The results showed that the estimates were higher under high-anchor than low-anchor conditions, suggesting the robust anchoring effect. Further, the anchoring effect was greater for anchor-relevant than anchor-irrelevant tasks and for negative rather than positive emotions. No age differences were found.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

The results indicated that the anchoring effect is robust and stable for younger and older adults, even though the anchor information seemed irrelevant. Finally, perceiving others' negative emotions is a crucial but rather difficult aspect of empathy, which could be a challenge and requires more caution for accurate interpretation.

Alexithymia and intolerance of uncertainty predict somatic symptoms in autistic and non-autistic adults

LAY ABSTRACT

Autistic people have more physical health problems than non-autistic people. We were interested in whether autistic people experience more discomfort in their bodies than non-autistic people and whether certain psychological traits contribute to that. A survey was completed online by older adolescents and adults, 51 of whom were autistic, 32 of whom thought they might be autistic but were not diagnosed and 119 who were not autistic. They completed measures of somatic symptoms (daily experience of pain, discomfort, dizziness), alexithymia (difficulty identifying and expressing feelings), interoception (how much people are aware of their bodies) and intolerance of uncertainty (how people handle doubt or uncertainty), and reported any physical or mental health conditions. We found that the autistic participants had more physical and mental health conditions than the non-autistic participants, but even when we took account of this, they experienced higher levels of somatic symptoms. We looked at which psychological factors influenced levels of somatic symptoms across the whole sample, and found that alexithymia, intolerance of uncertainty, having physical health problems, being female and the number of mental health conditions predicted somatic symptoms, while interoception and autism diagnosis did not. The findings suggest that people may be more likely to experience physical discomfort if they are female, and have difficulty identifying and expressing feeling and difficulty tolerating doubt. As these psychological factors are more prominent in autism, we think this is important for physical and mental health providers to know about, so that these psychological factors can be considered when assessing and treating autistic people.

The role of emotional awareness in evaluative judgment: evidence from alexithymia

Evaluative judgments imply positive or negative regard. But there are different ways in which something can be positive or negative. How do we tell them apart? According to Evaluative Sentimentalism, different evaluations (e.g., dangerousness vs. offensiveness) are grounded on different emotions (e.g., fear vs. anger). If this is the case, evaluation differentiation requires emotional awareness. Here, we test this hypothesis by looking at alexithymia, a deficit in emotional awareness consisting of problems identifying, describing, and thinking about emotions. The results of Study 1 suggest that high alexithymia is not only related to problems distinguishing emotions, but also to problems distinguishing evaluations. Study 2 replicated this latter effect after controlling for individual differences in attentional impulsiveness and reflective reasoning, and found that reasoning makes an independent contribution to evaluation differentiation. These results suggest that emotional sensibilities play an irreducible role in evaluative judgment while affording a role for reasoning.

Furthering the language hypothesis of alexithymia: An integrated review and meta-analysis

Alexithymia, including the inability to identify and express one's own feelings, is a subclinical condition responsible for some of the socioemotional symptoms seen across a range of psychiatric conditions. The language hypothesis of alexithymia posits a language-mediated disruption in the development of discrete emotion concepts from ambiguous affective states, exacerbating the risk of developing alexithymia in language-impaired individuals. To provide a critical evaluation, a systematic review and meta-analysis of 29 empirical studies of language functioning in alexithymia was performed. A modest association was found between alexithymia and multi-domain language deficits (r = -0.14), including structural language, pragmatics, and propensity to use emotional language. A more theoretically-relevant subsample analysis comparing alexithymia levels in language-impaired and typical individuals revealed larger effects, but a limited number of studies adopted this approach. A synthesis of 11 emotional granularity studies also found an association between alexithymia and reduced emotional granularity (r = -0.10). Language impairments seem to increase the risk of alexithymia. Heterogeneous samples and methods suggest the need for studies with improved alexithymia assessments.

Role of Alexithymia in Predicting Internet Novel Addiction through Boredom Proneness

With the development of the internet, people’s pursuit of reading entertainment has enriched internet novels, but the relevant influencing factors are still unclear. Therefore, we recruited 344 Chinese college students and employed a questionnaire survey to explore the relationship between alexithymia, boredom proneness, and internet novel addiction. The results showed that (1) there was no significant difference between female and male college students in terms of alexithymia and boredom proneness, whereas male college students had a higher total score of internet novel addiction than females. (2) There were significant positive correlations between alexithymia, boredom proneness, and internet novel addiction. (3) Boredom proneness played a partial mediating role in the impact of alexithymia on the internet novel addiction. Taken together, alexithymia may directly and indirectly predict internet novel addiction through boredom proneness.

Understanding Emotion Regulation and Humor Styles in Individuals with Callous-Unemotional Traits and Alexithymic Traits

Alexithymia is a personality trait which is characterized by impairments in identifying and describing emotions. Both psychopathic and alexithymic personality traits have been associated with impairments in emotion processing. This study aims to clarify the conceptual overlap between psychopathic traits (focusing on callous-unemotional traits) and alexithymic traits, with emotion regulation strategies and humor styles using a community sample. A battery of self-report measures was distributed through an online platform to 538 male and female participants between the ages of 18 to 65. Hierarchal linear regression analyses demonstrated that emotion regulation strategies were the strongest predictors and accounted for the largest variance of callous-unemotional traits and alexithymic traits. More specifically, expressive suppression arose as a positive predictor while cognitive reappraisal arose as a negative predictor for both personality traits. Aggressive humor (maladaptive) arose as a positive predictor while self-defeating humor (maladaptive) and affiliative humor (adaptive) arose as negative predictors for callous-unemotional traits. In contrast, self-defeating humor arose as a positive predictor for alexithymic traits while affiliative humor and self-enhancing humor arose as negative predictors. Findings indicate that there are similarities and differences between these personality traits. The implications regarding tailoring interventions that target specific deficits associated with each personality trait are discussed.

Infusing Context Into Emotion Perception Impacts Emotion Decoding Accuracy

The accurate decoding of facial emotion expressions lies at the center of many research traditions in psychology. Much of this research, while paying lip service to the importance of context in emotion perception, has used stimuli that were carefully created to be deprived of contextual information. The participants' task is to associate the expression shown in the face with a correct label, essentially changing a social perception task into a cognitive task. In fact, in many cases, the task can be carried out correctly without engaging emotion recognition at all. The present article argues that infusing context in emotion perception does not only add an additional source of information but changes the way that participants approach the task by rendering it a social perception task rather than a cognitive task. Importantly, distinguishing between accuracy (perceiving the intended emotions) and bias (perceiving additional emotions to those intended) leads to a more nuanced understanding of social emotion perception. Results from several studies that use the Assessment of Contextual Emotions demonstrate the significance and social functionality of simultaneously considering emotion decoding accuracy and bias for social interaction in different cultures, their key personality and societal correlates, and their function for close relationships processes.

Facial emotion recognition in autistic adult females correlates with alexithymia, not autism

Research on predominantly male autistic samples has indicated that impairments in facial emotion recognition typically associated with autism spectrum conditions are instead due to co-occurring alexithymia. However, whether this could be demonstrated using more realistic facial emotion recognition stimuli and applied to autistic females was unclear. In all, 83 females diagnosed with autism spectrum condition completed online self-report measures of autism spectrum condition severity and alexithymia, and afacial emotion recognition deficit that assessed their ability to identify multimodal displays of complex emotions. Higher levels of alexithymia, but not autism spectrum condition severity, were associated with less accurate facial emotion recognition. Difficulty identifying one’s own feelings and externally oriented thinking were the components of alexithymia that were specifically related to facial emotion recognition accuracy. However, alexithymia (and autism spectrum condition severity) was not associated with speed of emotion processing. The findings are primarily discussed with the theoretical view that perceiving and experiencing emotions share the same neural networks, thus being able to recognise one’s own emotions may facilitate the ability to recognise others’. This study is in line with previous similar research on autistic males and suggests impairments in facial emotion recognition in autistic females should be attributed to co-occurring alexithymia.

Panic Disorder as Unthinkable Emotions: Alexithymia in Panic Disorder, a Croatian Cross-Sectional Study

OBJECTIVES

Previous research on alexithymia has led to controversy over its prevalence in panic disorder. The aim of this study was to assess the difference in the prevalence of alexithymia in panic disorder and other anxiety disorders.

DESIGN AND METHODS

We performed a cross-sectional study on a sample of 71 patients diagnosed with panic disorder and 113 patients diagnosed with other anxiety disorders; both groups were 18-50 years old. Primary outcome was the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS) score. Secondary outcome was the prevalence of alexithymia defined as a TAS score ≥61.

RESULTS

Patients diagnosed with panic disorder had a 25% higher score on the TAS subscale of difficulty identifying feelings than patients diagnosed with other anxiety disorders. The prevalence of alexithymia was 27% in patients with panic disorder and 13% in patients with other anxiety disorders. Patients diagnosed with panic disorder had significantly higher odds for alexithymia.

CONCLUSIONS

The results of our study support the hypothesis of higher prevalence of alexithymia in individuals with panic disorder than in individuals with other anxiety disorders. In addition, difficulty identifying feelings as a salient feature of alexithymia is higher in panic disorder than in other anxiety disorders.