The impact of context on expressed vs. self-reported emotion: An alcohol-administration facial analysis trial

Within emotion science, a burgeoning body of research is seeking to capture links between discrete measures of emotional experience, including measures based in self-report and facial display. A prominent theme within this literature is the centrality of context in driving associations between reported and expressed emotion. Yet our understanding of how such contextual factors, and the mechanisms that drive them, might influence emotion measure convergence remains incomplete. The present study leverages a social alcohol-administration paradigm as a theoretically meaningful and ecologically valid manipulation of cognition, aiming to inform our understanding of situational influences on self-reported vs. behaviorally expressed emotion. Healthy social drinkers attended two laboratory beverage-administration sessions in counterbalanced order, one involving an alcoholic beverage (target BAC .08%) and the other a no-alcohol control. Participants were videotaped during the 36-minute alcohol consumption period and their facial expressions were coded by a team of certified FACS coders. Measures of self-reported mood were taken immediately prior to and following beverage consumption. Results indicated a significant interaction between beverage condition and self-reported positive mood as well as between beverage condition and self-reported negative mood in predicting Duchenne smiles, suggesting that the relationship between self-reported mood and displayed emotion was strongest among non-drinking participants. The present results, therefore, contribute to the extant conversation regarding the validity, utility, and interpretability of facial measures of emotion by highlighting socio-contextual circumstances under which measures of emotion might converge vs. diverge.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2023

Author dc:creator

• Caumiant, Eddie Preston

Contributors dc:contributor

• Fairbairn, Catharine

• Alcohol
• Emotion

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2023 Eddie Caumiant

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/122117

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F122117