title: Effects of sad mood on facial emotion recognition in Chinese people.
abstract: This study examined the influence of sad mood on the judgment of ambiguous facial emotion expressions among 47 healthy volunteers who had been induced to feel sad (n=13), neutral (n=15), or happy (n=19) emotions by watching video clips. The findings suggest that when the targets were ambiguous, participants who were in a sad mood tended to classify them in the negative emotional categories rather than the positive emotional categories. Also, this observation indicates that emotion-specific negative bias in the judgment of facial expressions is associated with a sad mood. The finding argues against a general impairment in decoding facial expressions. Furthermore, the observed mood-congruent negative bias was best predicted by spatial perception. The findings of this study provide insights into the cognitive processes underlying the interpersonal difficulties experienced by people in a sad mood, which may be predisposing factors in the development of clinical depression.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Neuropsychology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. tmclee@hkusua.hku.hk
authors.forename: Tatia M C
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Emily H H
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: Ng
authors.forename: S W
authors.initials: SW
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.forename: Chetwyn C H
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Chan
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D044466:Asian People / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D003863:Depression / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006240:Happiness; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010555:Personality Inventory; D011336:Probability; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012938:Social Perception; D013028:Space Perception; D014796:Visual Perception