Duchenne display responses towards sixteen enjoyable emotions: Individual differences between no and fear of being laugh
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Duchenne display responses towards sixteen enjoyable emotions: Individual differences between no and fear of being laughed at Tracey Platt • Jennifer Hofmann • Willibald Ruch Rene´ T. Proyer
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Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
Abstract The present study aims to identify whether individuals’ with a fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia), respond with less facially displayed joy (Duchenne display) generally towards enjoyable emotions or only those eliciting laughter. Forty participants (no vs. gelotophobia) described their feelings to scenarios prototypical for the 16 enjoyable emotions proposed by Ekman (Emotions revealed: recognizing faces and feelings to improve communication and emotional life. Times Books, New York, 2003), while being unobtrusively filmed. Facial responses were coded using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS, Ekman et al. in Facial Action Coding System: a technique for the measurement of facial movement. Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto, 2002). The gelotophobes showed less facial expression of joy compared to the nongelotophobes (Hypothesis 1) and this effect was stronger for frequency and intensity of Duchenne displays towards laughter-eliciting enjoyable emotions than for no laughtereliciting enjoyable emotions (Hypothesis 2). Moreover, the no gelotophobia group responded more strongly to laughter-eliciting than to no laughter-eliciting enjoyable emotions. Individuals with marked gelotophobia showed the reverse pattern, displaying less joy in laughter-eliciting emotions which may impact on their social interaction, as communication may break down when positive emotion are not reciprocated. Keywords Fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) Enjoyable emotions FACS Duchenne display Joy
T. Platt (&) J. Hofmann W. Ruch R. T. Proyer Section on Personality and Assessment, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Binzmuehlestrasse 14, Box 7, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected]
Introduction Positive emotions In early classifications of emotions often one positive emotion, namely, happiness or joy was distinguishable from several negative ones, such as anger, fear, disgust or sadness (e.g., Ekman 1972; Izard 1971). Further investigations showed that the emotion of joy is accompanied by a facial configuration called the Duchenne display (Ekman et al. 1990). The Duchenne display refers to the joint and symmetric contraction of the zygomatic major and orbicularis oculi muscles (pulling the lip corners back- and upwards and raising the cheeks and compression of the eyelids causing eye wrinkles, respectively). Different approaches postulated the existence of multiple enjoyable emotions, rather than the global positive emotion of joy (e.g., Fredrickson 1998; Haidt 2003; Lazarus 1991; Panksepp 1998; Shiota et al. 2004, 2006). However, what constitutes these classifications of positive emotions differs substantially. For example, Fredrickson (1998), Fredrickson and Branigan (2001) separated the positive emotions of j
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