TY - JOUR
T1 - Implicit facial emotion recognition of fear and anger in obesity
AU - Scarpina, Federica
AU - Varallo, Giorgia
AU - Castelnuovo, Gianluca
AU - Capodaglio, Paolo
AU - Molinari, Enrico
AU - Alessandro, Mauro
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Background: Previous evidence about facial emotion recognition capability in obesity is few and not conclusive. Objective: We investigated the capability of female individuals affected by obesity to recognize the emotions of fear and anger through a facial emotion recognition task grounded on the implicit redundant target effect. Methods: 20 women affected by obesity and 20 healthy-weight women were enrolled. We administered an implicit facial emotion recognition task. Both reaction time and level of accuracy were computed. Moreover, the level of alexithymia was measured through the standard questionnaire. Results: Selective difficulties in recognizing the emotion of fear were observed in participants with obesity, when their performance was contrasted with healthy-weight controls. Instead, they showed the implicit redundant target effect when anger was the target. However, the two groups reported globally similar scores at the standard questionnaire relative to the level of alexithymia. Conclusions: Our result might agree with the hypothesis about affected individuals’ difficulties in being attentive to negative facial emotions, and specifically in the case of fearful expression. This study might encourage future research in which emotional processing will be investigated through subjective judgments and implicit/objective measurements. Level I: Experimental study.
AB - Background: Previous evidence about facial emotion recognition capability in obesity is few and not conclusive. Objective: We investigated the capability of female individuals affected by obesity to recognize the emotions of fear and anger through a facial emotion recognition task grounded on the implicit redundant target effect. Methods: 20 women affected by obesity and 20 healthy-weight women were enrolled. We administered an implicit facial emotion recognition task. Both reaction time and level of accuracy were computed. Moreover, the level of alexithymia was measured through the standard questionnaire. Results: Selective difficulties in recognizing the emotion of fear were observed in participants with obesity, when their performance was contrasted with healthy-weight controls. Instead, they showed the implicit redundant target effect when anger was the target. However, the two groups reported globally similar scores at the standard questionnaire relative to the level of alexithymia. Conclusions: Our result might agree with the hypothesis about affected individuals’ difficulties in being attentive to negative facial emotions, and specifically in the case of fearful expression. This study might encourage future research in which emotional processing will be investigated through subjective judgments and implicit/objective measurements. Level I: Experimental study.
KW - Anger
KW - Facial emotion recognition
KW - Fear
KW - Obesity
KW - Redundant target effect
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U2 - 10.1007/s40519-020-01010-6
DO - 10.1007/s40519-020-01010-6
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85091092225
JO - Eating and Weight Disorders
JF - Eating and Weight Disorders
SN - 1124-4909
ER -