Methodological Variations of Facial Expressions With Patients Suffering from Depression: Article Analysis

Science released an article entitled “Facial Expressions—Including Fear—May Not Be as Universal as We Thought”, written by Michael Pierce on October 17, 2016. In this article Pierce discusses how 50 years ago it was assumed that facial expressions were universal. However, it has been found that in the present day, this may not be the case. Expressions such as happiness, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, or hunger, were all assumed to be expressed the same way as well as interpreted the same way. A study was conducted in the Trobriand Islands, were Trobrianders were shown as series of photos with facial expressions. They were asked to describe the emotions they interpreted from the photos, the results were intriguing. Pierce (2016) describes how

When our bodies respond in emotions, our health can be affected in many ways. When we are in an unpleasant mental state, our bodies can respond in impairing our immune systems, our blood pressure, and the risk of heart disease, a stroke,

Before starting the discussion of emotion-focused therapy, it is very important to have an understanding of what emotion is. Historically, emotions were seen as nonspecific and disruptive; however more recent analyses have emphasized the functions that emotions serve (Hebb, 1949). Although emotions address different adaptive problems, they generally facilitate decision making, prepare the individual for rapid motor responses and provide information regarding the ongoing match between organism and environment (Schwarz & Clore, 1983). In addition to this, emotion also serves as a social function for they inform us about others’ behavioral intentions, give us clues as to whether something is good or bad and control our social behavior (Greenberg & Safran, 1987). From an emotion-focused perspective, according to Greenberg (2004), emotion disorder is seen as a result of more failures in the dyadic regulation of affect, avoidance of affect, traumatic

Recently, some researchers have suggested that positive and negative symptoms may be caused by different neural mechanisms. It is important to mention that a reduction in displays of emotion does not necessarily imply that patients have less intense subjective emotional experiences than the average person. In fact, recent findings indicate that blunted emotional expressions can coexist with intense subjective feelings of emotion.

The facial expressions of adult grief is seen as a result of an adults inhibition of the tendency to

The goal of this Facial Ambiguity study experiment is to determine if age and/or mood has an impact on the perception of emotions. The perception of emotions is an important topic to study because the ability to discern emotions play a critical role in cognitive growth, reasoning, behavioral idiosyncrasies and basic survival. The prediction of the result was made by using participants, which consisted two groups, young adults and faculty, 30 pictures of neutral faces while music was playing in the background. The music consisted of sad and happy songs. While looking at the pictures and listening to the music in the background, the

For this project we will be testing fifty test subjects on six pictures of the same person representing the six core emotions the people will be trying to identify the emotion that the person's facial expressions are representing. Unlike regular facial expressions that are pro longed micro facial expressions cannot be faked and they often appear and disappear as fast as 1/15 to 1/25th of a second. The face is best indicator of a person's emotions. Dr. Paul Ekman has done groundbreaking research on micro facial expressions. He has shown that facial expressions are universal and people everywhere in the world make and display the same emotions through the same facial expressions like people in the US make the same facial expressions for sadness as people in Papua New Guinea. Dr.Ekman also realized through his research that even blind people who have never seen a humans face in their whole life have the same facial expressions as people who have their vision for each emotion. There are six universal micro expressions : disgust , anger , fear , sadness , surprise , and happiness. It's important to be able to read these six basic facial expressions because if you can determine what a person's emotions are it can help you

2013, p. 232). “This is what led to the psychodynamic idea that depression is anger turned inward” (Butcher et al. 2013, p. 232). Based on Beck’s cognitive model of depression (1967), “certain kinds of early experiences can lead to the formation of dysfunctional assumptions that leave a person vulnerable to depression later in life if certain critical incidents (stressors) activate those assumptions” (Butcher et al. 2013, p. 233). The helplessness and hopelessness theories of depression (1974, 1975) “states that when animals or humans find that they have no control over aversive events (such as shock), they learn that they are helpless, which makes them unmotivated to try to respond in the future” (Butcher et al. 2013, p. 235). In the 1970s and 1980s, a number of theorists developed behavioral theories of depression, “proposing that people become depressed either when their responses no longer produce positive reinforcement or when their rate of negative reinforcements increases” (Butcher et al. 2013, p. 232). “Nolen-Hoeksema’s ruminative response style cognitive theory of depression (e.g., 1991, 2000; Nolen-Hoeksema & Hilt, 2009) focuses on different kinds of responses that people have when they experience feelings and symptoms of sadness and distress, and

Sadness is an emotional response that is typically triggered by a difficult or hurtful event in a persons life. Whereas, depression is a mental illness that may or may not be set off by a specific trigger.

This was done by studying an individual called DR who had damage to her Amygdala, due to a surgery where lesions of the amygdala was removed in order to attempt to treat her epilepsy. DR was asked to identify the emotions of other individuals, she seemed to find it very difficult to identify fearful emotions. In another study, DR was asked to listen to sounds that other individuals were making in order to identify what emotion they were feeling, she seemed to be very poor at identifying when individuals were experiencing emotions such as fear and anger. This study shows that the amygdala appears to play a large role in recognising negative emotions.

Therefore, the fact that the depressed individuals’ sadness was already at an upper limit of measure while watching the neutral film did not impact the results (Rottenberg, 2005). The difference still remained significant, even after the depressed participants who had previously reported very high levels of sadness to the neutral film were removed from the data analysis (Rottenberg, 2005). Consequently, due to the lack of support for the hypothesis, Rottenberg questioned the results of his first study (Rottenberg, 2005). To answer his question, “were our results an anomaly?” (p. 168). In another test, He “sought to test the mood-facilitation hypothesis under conditions that were expected to favor its confirmation” (p. 168). However, despite his failure to prove the mood-facilitation hypothesis, his results otherwise suggest that “depression might actually blunt the distress and arousal that is typically associated with crying” (p.

Facial expressions range from a lot of different emotions. Most photos show me smiling however some show me with very “animated” facial expressions for the sake of humor. This can be a good sign and show employers my very “animated” personality. A lot of people I asked who knew me personally described me as someone who is somewhat “animated”. There are no real photos of me depressed on my Facebook or Twitter feed this I believe is

In this article, the author addressed the current state of research involving the brain mechanisms that underlie emotion and affective style. In addition, he discussed the relationship between affective style and mood and anxiety disorders, and the individual differences that mediate those relationships. Most importantly, for purposes of this course, is an examination of brain plasticity and its role in promoting resilience. The article suggests that the activity in certain areas of the brain, especially in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala, play a key role in determining how an individual is able to regulate their emotions and therefore exhibit resilience.

Paul Ekman was born in 1934 and at age 14 his mother committed suicide after suffering from severe bi-polar disorder. At that point, he decided he wanted to study facial expressions of emotion in order to assist other people before such tragic outcomes occurred. By the time he was 15, he had enrolled in University of Chicago and became interested in group therapy. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in 1954 and in 1958 he had earned his Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Adelphi University. His Master’s thesis was about the study of facial expressions and body movement. From 1960 to 2004 he worked at the University of California and starting in 1963 he received continual research grants from the National Institute of Mental Health for 40 years to study nonverbal behavior.

The aim of the present study was to investigate which hemisphere is specialised for the perception of emotion. It was hypothesised that participants will judge chimeric faces with smile presented in the left visual field as happier more often than chimeric faces with the smile presented in the right visual field. Twenty-six psychology students were asked to judge chimeric faces with one half being a smiling expression and the other half with a neutral expression. The images were presented in their left and right visual field. Over 28 experimental trials the participants were asked to judge which face they thought looked happier. The percentage of chimeric faces judged as happier for both left and right visual field was recorded. The hypothesis was supported: chimeric faces with smile presented in the left visual field as happier more often than chimeric faces with the smile presented in the right visual field.