Encoding differences in posed negative emotional expressions between prosocials and proselfs

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to test whether people with proself orientation would be less accurate in the encoding of negative facial expressions than people with prosocial orientation when they intentionally make facial expressions. Six universal facial expressions, which were anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise, of 72 participants were photographed. Then, the accuracy of expressing action units (AUs), which are compositions of facial expressions, was measured using an automatic facial expression decoding program. Afterwards, the mean differences in the values of AUs and their combinations of each facial expression between prosocials and proselfs were examined. First, according to the correlation analysis of self-reported measures proself orientation was positively related to amoral manipulation and vulnerable type of narcissism, and negatively related to mental health and emotional competence. Second, compared to prosocials, proselfs expressed less accurately in upper lid raiser for both fear and surprise facial expressions when AUs at the baseline were not controlled. Third, the expression of inner brow raiser in fear facial expression was suppressed among proselfs when the baseline AU was controlled. However, there was no significant difference found in each combination of AUs. Partially supporting our hypothesis, these findings suggest that proselfs express negative emotions less accurately than prosocials, particularly showing suppressed AUs of fear facial expression. This result may reflect proselfs' high exploitativeness and competitiveness as well as suppressed submissiveness, which serve to present themselves as dominant. Further implications of the results of the present study were discussed.