Inducing sad recognition bias: A novel emotional probabilistic reward task and its affective consequences
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Recognition of sadness from facial expressions is associated with empathic responses. In this study, we devised an emotional probabilistic reward task (PRT) to facilitate sadness recognition and tested its effects on attentional and empathic responses to others in distress. During the emotional PRT, healthy participants were asked to discriminate between facial expressions subtly expressing sadness or anger. Reward feedback for correct sadness and anger recognition was provided, with different probabilities between the training (70% vs. 30%) and control groups (50% vs. 50%). Subsequently, participants performed a visual dot-probe task involving facial expressions of sadness, anger, fear, and happiness. They also completed an empathy rating task while viewing short video clips depicting people experiencing distressing or neutral events. The results showed that the training group developed greater recognition bias for sadness than the control group. Within the training group, sad recognition bias was positively associated with subsequent attentional orienting to sad faces and empathic concern towards distressed others. These findings suggest that the emotional PRT holds promise for modifying cognitive and emotional processes that are associated with empathy for others.
Source: PLoS ONE
Authors: Seongbo Lee, Sang Hee Kim
Institution: Korea University
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,290
OpenAlex ID: W4404134884