In Later Life, We Become Less Aware Of Other People ’s Anger And Fear, But Remain Sensitive To Their Happiness

By Emma Young Most people find it easy to infer the emotional state underlying a scowl or beaming smile. But not all facial emotional signals are so obvious. Sensitivity to these less obvious emotional signals varies from one person to another and is a useful skill, improving relations with other people and benefiting psychological wellbeing. As well as varying between individuals, are there also shifts in this ability during a typical person’s life? And, if so, might these age-related changes be relevant to known high-risk periods for psychological problems and the onset of mental illness? A new study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, provides some answers. Lauren Rutter at Harvard Medical School and her colleagues analysed data on 9,190 people aged 10 to 85 from the US, the UK, Canada, India, Australia and Germany. These participants completed the Emotion Sensitivity test on the testmybrain.org website. They were shown 56 pairs of faces, and each time, they were asked which of the pair was “more angry”, “more happy”, or “more fearful”. The faces had been carefully manipulated so that the difficulty level in making these judgements was “easy”, “medium” or “hard”.  The researchers found that sensitivity to facial cues of anger increased steeply from age 10 to age 14, then increased at a slower rate until age 30, followed by a gradual decrease in sensitivity into late age. From an ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Developmental Emotion Source Type: blogs