Abstract
Accurate emotion perception is an indicator of current psychosocial functioning. Past studies have reported variable relationships between impaired emotion identification, maladaptive personality traits, and psychopathology. We examined associations between discrimination performance and trait negative emotionality, positive emotionality, constraint, and absorption using the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire. New military soldiers (n = 548) viewed perceptually similar face pairs and picked the face with greater emotional intensity. Emotional intensity differences were small (10%, 20%, 30%, or 40%). Among the most ambiguous conditions (10%, 20%, 30%), absorption predicted higher accuracy. Negative emotionality predicted lower accuracy irrespective of percent difficulty. Furthermore, absorption predicted longer engagement during the 10% condition. Constraint predicted longer engagement regardless of the difficulty condition. Trait absorption accuracy effects were specific for sad, angry, and fearful faces, while negative emotionality accuracy effects were specific for sad faces. The findings highlight absorption as an underappreciated domain for explaining motivational engagement with faces and negative emotionality as a transdiagnostic predictor of impaired emotion perception.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 627-637 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Motivation and Emotion |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors wish to thank the command leadership of the Minnesota Army National Guard for their facilitation of this work and the military service members who participated in the project. Research reported in this manuscript was supported by the National Center for Complementary & Integrative Health of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number UH3AT009651. This material was also supported with resources and the use of facilities at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System, Minneapolis, Minnesota. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views or policy of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of the Army, U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.
Funding Information:
The authors wish to thank the command leadership of the Minnesota Army National Guard for their facilitation of this work and the military service members who participated in the project. Research reported in this manuscript was supported by the National Center for Complementary & Integrative Health of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number UH3AT009651. This material was also supported with resources and the use of facilities at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System, Minneapolis, Minnesota. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views or policy of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of the Army, U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, This is a U.S. Government work and not under copyright protection in the US; foreign copyright protection may apply.
Keywords
- Absorption
- Emotionality
- Face perception
- Military
- Personality