J Nonverbal Behav (2011) 35:279–286 DOI 10.1007/s10919-011-0114-5 COMMENTARY
Moving Beyond Basic Emotions in Aging Research Louise H. Phillips • Gillian Slessor
Published online: 24 July 2011 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011
Abstract There is consistent evidence that older adults have difficulties in perceiving emotions. However, emotion perception measures to date have focused on one particular type of assessment: using standard photographs of facial expressions posing six basic emotions. We argue that it is important in future research to explore adult age differences in understanding more complex, social and blended emotions. Using stimuli which are dynamic records of the emotions expressed by people of all ages, and the use of genuine rather than posed emotions, would also improve the ecological validity of future research into age differences in emotion perception. Important questions remain about possible links between difficulties in perceiving emotional signals and the implications that this has for the everyday interpersonal functioning of older adults. Keywords Adult aging Emotion perception Ecological validity Interpersonal functioning
Do older people have difficulties in decoding emotional cues? What implications does this have for social functioning in old age? Isaacowitz and Stanley (2011) provide a thorough and useful review of the literature on these topics, evaluating key methodological and theoretical frameworks in the field of emotion perception. While there is growing consensus on the pattern of facial emotion perception difficulties in old age, the novel contribution of this review is to highlight the lack of ecological validity in most studies to date, and outline future priorities to address this issue. Using more ecologically valid measures is essential to evaluate the applicability of emotion perception problems to everyday life. Given that we know from other domains of cognitive research that setting tasks in an everyday context can reduce or even reverse age effects (e.g., Henry et al. 2004), this is an important issue to explore.
L. H. Phillips (&) G. Slessor School of Psychology, College of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 3FX, Scotland, UK e-mail:
[email protected]
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Isaacowitz and Stanley highlight the relatively reliable pattern of age effects in facial emotion perception. Older adults tend to make a disproportionate number of errors when labeling expressions of fear, anger and sadness, but there are usually no age differences in labeling happiness, surprise and disgust. However, it is also clear that we still do not have sufficient evidence to understand why these age patterns exist. Existing data indicates that general cognitive or perceptual decline is unlikely to explain this pattern, but the contribution of specific cognitive functions such as executive control has not been explored in detail. This is an important issue to explore in future studies because the classic emotional labeling task (deciding which of six labels best describes a facial emotion) has a high working memory load (Phillips et al. 2008). A recent study indicates that older adults with poor executive functioning have particular problems in perceiving emotions from static pictures of faces, but not dynamic displays of emotion (Krendl and Ambady 2010). In the rest of this commentary we will expand upon some of the key themes highlighted by Issacowitz and Stanley to understand the role of ecological validity in emotion perception problems in old age, referring to some new data and priorities for future research. Important topics relevant to ecological validity include: own-age effects, multimodal emotion perception, and moving beyond the six ‘basic’ emotions to consider blended, complex, genuine and masked emotions. Finally, we will address a fundamental issue raised by the target article: evidence indicating that older adults do not show interpersonal deficits.
Own-Age Effects Isaacowitz and Stanley raise the issue of own-age biases, i.e. the possibility that greater recent experience of interacting with similar age peers will improve the decoding of social cues. The majority of research investigating the effects of adult aging on emotion perception and social cue decoding in general have used only younger adult faces as stimuli and therefore older adult participants may be at a disadvantage when completing these tasks. There is evidence of own-age bias effects in some aspects of social perception (e.g., following another person’s gaze, Slessor et al. 2010a). However, the results for emotion perception have to date not provided support for straightforward own-age biases. As Isaacowitz and Stanley point out, the few emotion perception studies which include both young and old faces as stimuli have found that it is easier to perceive emotions in young adult faces (Ebner et al. in press; Ebner and Johnson 2009, 2010; Malatesta et al. 1987) whatever the age of the perceiver. This likely reflects changing facial muscles and skin with age. Evidence to date indicates that there is no own-age biases favoring emotion perception accuracy in similar aged peers (e.g. Ebner and Johnson 2009; Murphy et al. 2010). However, despite the lack of simple own-age biases in interpreting facial expression, each of these studies did find interactions between age of participant, and either age of face, or experience of interacting with own age peers. These interactions indicate that young and older participants may have different criteria for judging emotions in faces of varying ages, related to their experience of social interaction with a range of age groups. According to Ebner and Johnson (2009), participants may be less interested and invest less effort in decoding emotional expressions displayed by other-age faces as they consider it is less likely that these people are potential partners for social interaction. Ebner et al. (in press) looked at whether attention to own-age faces might bias emotion perception in a visual scanning study. Younger and older participants spent longer looking at emotions in own-aged compared to other-aged faces. Time spent looking at faces was
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found to be positively correlated with recognition of own-age facial expressions but this association was not found to be significant for other age faces. Greater experience with own-age faces may result in the development of improved schemas which influence where attention is directed and in turn emotion recognition. Given some findings of age of participant by age of face interactions, this suggests that it would be useful in future research to use both young and old faces as stimuli wherever possible. This should be a particular priority for studies which increase the ecological validity of emotion perception tasks, and also use more implicit or behavioral measures of emotion perception such as person judgments or motor mimicry.
Multimodal Emotion Perception Studies of age differences in emotion perception mostly present stimuli in a single modality only, e.g. from a photograph of a face. As Isaacowitz and Stanley point out, this considerably reduces ecological validity because in real settings we tend to get multimodal information about emotions: e.g., from sounds and gestures as well as faces. In a recent study Hunter et al. (2010) investigated whether providing multimodal information about emotions might help older people to distinguish between different affective states. Older adults were less able than their younger counterparts to distinguish between different emotions when information was presented in faces only, in line with the many studies reviewed by Isaacowitz and Stanley. A similar age-related deficit was found in labeling emotions from auditory information only. However, a multimodal condition where participants simultaneously saw an emotional face and heard a congruent emotional sound substantially improved the performance of older adults. In fact, having both auditory and visual information available eliminated age differences in accuracy of emotion labeling. Hunter et al. (2010) interpret these results to indicate that older adults particularly benefit from the availability of multimodal information when interpreting emotions. This might be because of the increased ecological validity of multimodal emotion presentations. Also, having multiple channels of information provides a greater level of redundancy, which might help to attenuate declines in the speed or efficiency of processing emotional information in old age.
Moving Beyond Six Basic Emotions The majority of studies assessing age-related differences in emotion perception have used black and white photographs of individuals posing six basic emotions (anger, fear, disgust, surprise, happiness and sadness). However, these are not the only emotions expressed in real situations. Relatively few studies have investigated the effects of aging on the ability to decode more complex social emotions such as guilt, shame and contempt. Slessor et al. (2007) found evidence of an age-related decline in the perception of complex emotions from photographs of the eye region and dynamic videos of social interactions. Stanley and Blanchard-Fields (2008) also found that along with difficulties recognizing basic emotions, older adults had problems decoding facial expressions of shame and guilt. Further evidence is required to understand the pattern of age-related differences in decoding these more complex emotional states. For example, are differences found only for negative emotions (e.g., contempt, guilt, shame) or also positive expressions (e.g., pride, hope, excitement)?
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In addition, even decoding basic emotional expressions in real situations does not rely on the analysis of discrete, prototypical expressions, as often more than one emotion is experienced at a time: e.g., the poignant experience of viewing photographs of a deceased friend which may simultaneously evoke both happiness and sadness. An ecological approach to exploring age-related differences in emotion perception suggests the inclusion of facial expressions which depict a blend of different emotions. Previous studies using emotional blends found evidence of older adults’ problems in interpreting the dominant emotion displayed, particularly when this was negatively valenced (e.g., anger, fear or sadness; Bucks et al. 2008; Calder et al. 2003; Sullivan and Ruffman 2004). However, these studies have been interested in the perception of the dominant emotion and not assessed age differences in the mix of emotions perceived or the intensity of these. Given that there may be age differences in the experience of blends of emotions, such as poignancy (Zhang et al. 2010), this seems an important issue to explore. Few aging studies have looked at the ability to perceive genuine displays of emotion, instead focusing on widely used emotion stimuli consisting of prototypical posed expressions. Two recent studies have looked at age effects in distinguishing between posed and genuine smiles (Murphy et al. 2010; Slessor et al. 2010b). Looking at smiles is particularly interesting because it allows a more detailed examination of age differences in discriminating between positive emotional signals, which is not possible with tasks which involve labeling the six basic emotions. Using photographs of posed and genuine smiles, Slessor et al. (2010b) found no age differences in the ability to discriminate between static images of people displaying posed and genuine smiles. However, older adults demonstrated a greater bias towards thinking that any smiling individual was ‘‘feeling happy’’. In a second study assessing social judgments of approachability, Slessor et al. (2010b) found that older adults were also more likely than younger participants to choose to approach an individual when they were displaying a posed smile. These results indicate no age-related difficulties in distinguishing between different types of smile, but an overall positivity bias in judging smiles. In contrast, Murphy et al. (2010) used dynamic smiles in their task, and found evidence of an age-related improvement in distinguishing posed from genuine smiles. They found no indication of an age-related bias when judging whether smiles were posed. The different pattern of results in the two smiles studies may be caused by the use of static versus dynamic emotional stimuli. As Issacowitz and Stanley highlight, dynamic emotional stimuli (as used by Murphy et al. 2010) are likely to be more ecologically valid, information-rich and easy to distinguish than the static pictures used in most other aging studies, including Slessor et al. (2010b). However, the smiles studies also differ in the stimuli used, and the question asked about the smiles. While Murphy et al. asked participants to decide whether each smile was posed or genuine, Slessor et al.(2010b) asked them to say whether the person in the photograph was feeling happy or not. It would be useful in future studies to directly compare asking the same discrimination questions about still photographs and video clips of the same people. This could also be extended to discriminating between posed and genuine portrayals of negative emotions. One clear result from both of the studies of smile discrimination is that age deficits in accuracy of negative emotion perception outlined in Issacowitz and Stanley’s review disappear or reverse when looking at positive facial expression of emotions, even when ceiling performance is avoided. Orgeta and Phillips (2008) also found data to indicate that older adults are relatively good at labeling happy expressions, even when performance is reduced to well below ceiling by making the discrimination more difficult. It is important
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in future research to examine whether this age related stability (or improvement) in identifying positive emotions relates to positivity biases seen in attention. Another important way in which real emotions differ from the prototypical basic six used in most emotion perception tasks is that in social contexts individuals may also mask their true emotions with other expressions (e.g., hiding annoyance with a smile). This may result in only brief glimpses of the true, genuine emotion being revealed (microexpressions: Ekman 2007). However, to date studies have not investigated adult age-related differences in the ability to detect masked emotions or microexpressions of emotion. These emotional displays are more frequently used in social contexts and therefore any declines in the ability to pick up on these social cues are more likely to impact interpersonal functioning.
Implications for Interpersonal Functioning in Older Adults In their review, Issacowitz and Stanley make the intriguing point that age-related deficits in standard tasks of facial emotion perception seem at odds with a separate body of literature indicating that older adults do not seem to have interpersonal skill deficits. This raises serious questions as to whether performance on emotion perception tasks has any predictive validity for social and interpersonal problems in everyday life. If not, then we are measuring something which might be of theoretical interest but have limited applicability. An important issue to consider here is how interpersonal and social success is conceptualized and measured. There are numerous questionnaires designed to assess satisfaction with social and interpersonal skills, to assess the quantity and/or quality of social networks, or the amount of social activities carried out. These questionnaires generally depend on self-ratings, and usually older people rate their satisfaction with everyday social interactions as being high. However, an important caveat to raise here is that older adults tend to rate their skills as being quite good on a range of different self-assessment questionnaires, including many aspects of cognitive function (such as memory and executive function) well known to decline with age (Rabbitt et al. 1995). This might reflect a positivity bias in self-evaluations in old age, or perhaps a comparison bias when self-rating: older adults may feel that they are doing relatively well compared to their peers. This means that age group comparisons on scores of self-rated questionnaires have to be interpreted cautiously as different biases may be operating for younger and older participants. There are relatively few studies which simultaneously measures problems in emotion perception in old age, and any aspect of social functioning. In one recent study, Phillips et al. (2010) reported on correlations between ability to perceive facial expressions of emotion and self-reported quality of life in three groups of older adults: healthy controls, people with depression, and people with Alzheimer’s disease. In both the healthy older adults and those with dementia there was a significant and positive association, so that those with poorer emotion perception also reported poorer quality of life. Regression analyses indicated that this relationship could not be explained by levels of cognitive functioning. This evidence indicates that older adults who struggle to perceive emotions also experience poorer quality of life. It is important to explore in more detail whether (and how) emotion perception difficulties in old age might relate to social communication skills, success of interpersonal relationships, and the amount and satisfaction with social participation. It would be very useful if emotion perception studies routinely included assessments of interpersonal functioning, and reported on relationships between these two
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constructs. Such reporting should be encouraged, even where the correlations are nonsignificant, to avoid publication bias. A final important point on this topic is that some behavioral measures (which are not dependent on self-ratings) indicate that social skills deficits in old age may exist beyond facial emotion perception tasks. Older adults also show problems in many other social perception tasks (e.g., engagement in joint attention, Slessor et al. 2008; understanding someone else’s mental states, Slessor et al. 2007; detecting deception from nonverbal cues, Stanley and Blanchard-Fields 2008; decoding intentions from body movements, Insch et al. in press). Failing to understand and react to the many different social and emotional cues which bombard us during interpersonal interactions could have important consequences. For example, there is an age-related increase in some socially inappropriate behaviors (e.g., making socially inappropriate comments and engaging in extended unreciprocated speech; Henry et al. 2009). One recent finding indicates that problems in emotion perception in old age may relate to a very specific socially important behavior. Ruffman et al. (2010) report that, amongst a group of older adults, those who have most problems with emotion perception tend to also show more off-topic verbosity. This result may indicate that difficulties with emotion perception influence ability to read interpersonal cues which indicate that it is now time to stop talking. It is important to look more closely at how problems with emotion perception in old age relate to other behavioral measures of interpersonal communication skills.
Theoretical Issues and Conclusions Most of the research exploring age differences in emotion perception has been atheoretical—so we still have limited understanding of what might explain the pattern of age effects. One theory is that changing neural function with age might be important. Age differences are greatest in perceiving emotions (sadness, anger and fear) most dependent on frontal and temporal lobe integrity, and smallest or reversed on disgust, which depends on a rather separate brain network (Ruffman et al. 2008). Functional neuroimaging studies have provided some tentative evidence to indicate that there may be differences in patterns of activation in younger and older adults when viewing facial expressions of emotion. However, to date there has not been enough data to directly evaluate the hypothesis that changing neural function might underlie age differences in emotion perception. It is also possible that age differences in neural patterns in response to emotional stimuli may relate to more motivational changes with age, which act to direct attention away from negative information in the environment (Williams et al. 2006). In that regard, a broader picture of links between different emotional functions in old age is needed in the future. We still do not have enough direct evidence to evaluate whether there are links between the pattern of age effects in emotion perception and: attentional biases towards positive information in old age (Mather and Carstensen 2003), age-related changes in baseline emotional states and some aspects of emotion regulation (Gross et al. 1997), changing physiological and neural responses to emotional stimuli in old age (Gunning-Dixon et al. 2003), or altered patterns of attention to the eyes in facial stimuli (Sullivan et al. 2007). It is an important goal of future research to establish whether such links exist. To sum up: age-related declines on standard tests of emotion perception are now well established, but there are important questions remaining about the implications this has for everyday functioning of older adults. Future research must prioritize the use of mixed-age
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multimodal stimuli to assess emotion perception, and look beyond the six ‘basic’ emotions to utilize stimuli that include complex, blended and genuine affective experiences.
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