The smile is a frequently expressed facial expression that typically conveys a positive emotional state and friendly intent. However, human beings have also learned how to fake smiles, typically by controlling the mouth to provide a genuine-looking expression. This is often accompanied by inaccuracies that can allow others to determine that the smile is false. Mouth movement is one of the most striking features of the smile, yet our understanding of its dynamic elements is still limited. The present study analyzes the dynamic features of lip corners, and considers how they differ between genuine and posed smiles. Employing computer vision techniques, we investigated elements such as the duration, intensity, speed, symmetry of the lip corners, and certain irregularities in genuine and posed smiles obtained from the UvA-NEMO Smile Database. After utilizing the facial analysis tool OpenFace, we further propose a new approach to segmenting the onset, apex, and offset phases of smiles, as well as a means of measuring irregularities and symmetry in facial expressions. We extracted these features according to 2D and 3D coordinates, and conducted an analysis. The results reveal that genuine smiles have higher values for onset, offset, apex, and total durations, as well as offset displacement, and a variable we termed Irregularity-b (the SD of the apex phase) than do posed smiles. Conversely, values tended to be lower for onset and offset Speeds, and Irregularity-a (the rate of peaks), Symmetry-a (the correlation between left and right facial movements), and Symmetry-d (differences in onset frame numbers between the left and right faces). The findings from the present study have been compared to those of previous research, and certain speculations are made.

Difficulties in emotion regulation (DER) and emotion reactivity (ER) are important causes and consequences of psychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety, and previous research suggests that there are many interactions between them. Understanding the structure of their relationship, and which components may play a key role, will help provide insight into emotion disorders in adolescents and provide guidance for clinical interventions. In this study, we collected data from 483 adolescents and used network analysis methods to explore the relationship between DER and ER, specifically looking for core nodes. The results showed that “limited access to emotion regulation strategies” was the most central node in the network. Furthermore, by adding nodes for depression and anxiety to this network, we found that anxiety had the strongest relationship with ER, while depression had a stronger relationship with DER. Thus, our findings suggest that for anxiety disorders, the strong association with ER highlights a potentially promising area for intervention development, whereas for depression, the association with DER points to the possibility of clarifying emotions and exploring coping strategies, acknowledging the complex interplay between depressive and anxious symptoms.

Cheating on exams is a very common phenomenon that causes great harm. Various measures, such as chastisement and direct punishment, have been employed to reduce cheating. Previous studies have found that increasing punishment and activating “self-concept maintenance” can reduce this behavior. This study employed a priming paradigm to investigate whether priming legal consequences and the concept of honesty would reduce cheating in examination situations. We found a situation where students are traditionally cheating in examinations where we can conduct a field study. In Exp. 1, a total of 402 freshmen from 17 classes were included in this study. The 185 students in experimental condition were primed for legal consequences. We defined the cheating behaviors and employed analysts to count the number of cheaters. The results show that the number of students cheating in the primed group did not decrease compared to those in the controlled condition. In Exp. 2, A total of 339 freshmen from 14 classes participated in this experiment. The 171 students in experimental condition were primed for the concept of honesty. The results also show that about half of the students cheated in the examination, and the number of students cheating in the primed group did not decrease. This study shows that priming legal consequence and the concept of honesty were not significant in certain situations, such as during examinations. We suggest that some psychological manipulations in decreasing dishonesty behaviors should be further tested in ecological situations.

Previous research has found that when gaze direction matches the underlying behavioral intent communicated by the expression of a specific emotion, it enhances or facilitates the perception of that emotion; this is called the shared signal hypothesis (SSH). Specifically, a direct gaze shares an approach-orientated signal with the emotions of anger and joy, whereas an averted gaze shares an avoidance-orientated signal with fear and sadness. In this research, we attempted to verify the SSH by using different materials on Asian participants. In Experiment 1 we employed photos of models exhibiting direct and averted gazes for rating tasks, in order to study the effects of gaze direction on participants’ perception of emotion. In Experiment 2 we utilized smiling faces in a similar investigation. The results show that for neutral and smiling faces, a direct gaze (relative to a gaze of avoidance) increased the likelihood of a subject perceiving a happy mood; a gaze of avoidance increased the likelihood that anger and fear would be perceived. The effect of gaze direction on emotional expression perception was verified, but a “facilitating-impairing” pattern was not. The difference between our work and previous research may be attributable to the materials employed (which were more ecological), as well as the participants, who were from a different culture.

Deception is a complex and cognitively draining dyadic process that simultaneously involves cognitive and emotional processes, both of which demand/capture attentional resources. However, few studies have investigated the allocation of attentional resources between cognitive and emotional processes during deception. The current study presented facial expressions of different valences to 36 participants. While an electroencephalogram was recording, they were asked to make either truthful or deceptive gender judgments according to preceding cues. The results showed that deceptive responses induced smaller P300 amplitudes than did truthful responses. Task-irrelevant negative emotional information (TiN) elicited larger P300 amplitudes than did task-irrelevant positive emotional information (TiP). Furthermore, the results showed that TiN elicited larger LPP amplitudes than did TiP in deceptive responses, but not in truthful ones. The results suggested that attentional resources were directed away to deception-related cognitive processes and TiN, but not TiP, was consistently able to compete for and obtain attentional resources during deception. The results indicated that TiN could disrupt with deception and may facilitate deception detection.

Background: Growing evidence suggests a relationship between deficits in cognitive control and anxiety. However, studies examining cognitive control within affective contexts (affective control) are limited, and the specific characteristics of affective control in patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) remain unclear. This study investigated whether differences exist in cognitive control under affective contexts.Methods: We conduct our research in a population of GAD patients (n = 50) and a healthy control group (n = 50). The affective flanker task measured affective inhibition, while the affective flexibility task assessed affective shifting capabilities.Results: GAD patients exhibited abnormal affective inhibition, characterized by reduced proactive control related to target stimulus processing and enhanced reactive control associated with distractor resolution. Additionally, GAD patients demonstrated deficits in affective shifting, as indicated by significantly higher shifting costs in both non-affective and affective tasks compared to the healthy control group.Conclusions: The findings reveal that GAD patients display poorer emotion recognition abilities, indicating deficits in affective control compared to healthy individuals. Our study underscores the importance of measuring affective control by delineating it into distinct components.