Emotional Reactivity And Facial Expressions Recognition Under Stress:Individual Differences In Sense Of Coherence

Sense of coherence (SOC) which is defined as "...a global orientation that expresses the extent to which one has a pervasive, enduring though dynamic feeling of confidence..." by Aaron Antonovsky, is a crucial variable in the alleviation of stress and the maintenance of health. There are three dimensions in SOC, including comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness. There is a wealth of evidence demonstrating sense of coherence is related to negative emotion, but the relationship with positive emotion remains unclear. In present study, we designed two experiments centering on the whole emotional process from inducing period to recovering period to discuss the relationship between SOC and positive/negative emotion, and explored the characteristic of facial expressions perception among SOC individuals. The present study consisted of two parts:Part 1:After testing the 13-item short version of the Orientation to Life Questionnaire (SOC-13), there were 46 subjects (HSoc 23, LSoc 23) to complete the "nine holes" task to investigate the characteristic of their emotional response process under stress circumstances. The results revealed that (a) Under stressful circumstance, individuals with high sense of coherence reported significantly more positive emotion than low sense of coherence participants. (b) High sense of coherence individuals got more emotion recovered during the rest period. (c) Individuals with low sense of coherence were induced more negative emotion under stress and recovered themselves more slowly. Therefore, sense of coherence may act as a’stabilizer’in the maintenance of mental health.Part 2:Following signal detection theory (SDT) paradigm (setting happy faces as signal, sad faces as noise), the experiment recruited 57 college students (HSoc 29, LSoc 28) to investigate their response bias and emotion discrimination ability during facial expression recognition (FER) task.A 3(pre-set probability of happy faces:0.2/0.5/0.8)×2(group of SOC:HSoc/LSoc) two-factor mixed design with type of SOC as within subject factor was employed. The results revealed that (a) In stressful situation, high sense of coherence participants tended to recognize neutral expression faces as happy ones. (b) While the response biases on happy facial emotion were affected by pre-set probability conditions, the emotion sensitivity did not be affected. When the pre-set probability was 0.2, the response biases on happy faces between individuals with high SOC and those with low SOC were significantly different, but there were no significant difference detected under the conditions of 0.5 and 0.8 pre-set probabilities. As to the emotion sensitivity of happy faces, there were no significant differences between HSoc and LSoc groups.Main conclusions of this study:(1) Individuals with high sense of coherence experience more positive emotion when given stressful circumstance.(2) Low sense of coherence individuals have more negative emotion under stress situation and recover themselves more slowly.(3) Under stressful circumstance, individuals with high SOC were more likely to classify neutral-valenced faces as positive.(4) When happy faces are rare, HSoc and LSoc groups differ in response biases. Both groups have a fine ability of discriminating different facial expressions.