Chronic negative mood affects internal representations of negative facial expressions – An internet study

Facial expressions are an important source of information in social interactions, as they effectively communicate someone’s emotional state. Not surprisingly, the human visual system is highly specialized in processing facial expressions. Interestingly, processing of facial expressions is influenced by the emotional state of the observer: in a negative mood, observers are more sensitive to negative emotional expression than when they are in a positive mood, and vice versa. Here, we investigated the effects of chronic negative mood on perception of facial expressions by means of an online reverse correlation paradigm. We administered a depression questionnaire assessing chronic negative mood over the last two weeks. We constructed a classification image for negative emotion for each participant by means of an online reverse correlation task, which were rated for intensity of expression by an independent group of observers. Here we found a strong correlation between chronic mood and intensity of expression of the internal representation: the more negative chronic mood, the less intense the negative expression of the internal representation. This experiment corroborates earlier findings that the perception of facial expression is affected by an observer’s mood, and that this effect may be the result of altered top-down internal representations of facial expression. Equally importantly, though, our results demonstrate the feasibility of applying a reverse correlation paradigm via the Internet, opening up the possibility for large-sample studies using this technique.