Running head: EI AND ACCURACY IN EMOTIONAL RECOGNITION 1

Emotion Recognition in Relation to Emotional Intelligence and Section of Face Presented

Dalton Bartz

Minnesota State University Moorhead

EI AND ACCURACY IN EMOTIONAL RECOGNITION 2

Abstract

Discerning facial emotion is important when deciding how to react in a given situation. Should

some of the presented facial information be taken away, will that affect accuracy of response?

Will a persons ability to perceive and express emotion, or Emotional Intelligence (EI) have an

impact on how much it is affected? We will run a 3 x 2 with the first independent variable as face

being shown with the levels: whole, upper, and lower, and of the second independent

variable being EI with two levels: high and low. The study will use 80 students from MSUM

to find out. These students will examine a battery of images with models expressing six different

emotions, and will respond with what the emotion is. There will also be images where only upper

or lower half of the face will be presented. It is expected that participants will score higher in

accuracy when presented with the whole face, but will score similarly in accuracy to low EI

participants when presented with only partial faces. Participants will respond with what emotion

they believe is being shown. They will all complete a measure of EI. Comparisons will be made

between high and low EI level, portion of face shown, and number of correct response.
EI AND ACCURACY IN EMOTIONAL RECOGNITION 3

Emotion Recognition in Relation to Emotional Intelligence and Section of Face Presented

There are a wide variety of situations where the ability to recognize emotion in faces

would be incredibly useful in many common daily situations. Whether a person is going into an

interview for a new job, or theyre attempting to figure out how to respond in interpersonal

relationships, there is always a need for reading emotion. Being able to accurately judge emotion

in a face is important in truly any situation involving another person. Not only is it important to

be able to discern emotion, but it is important to understand the many variables that affect the

ability to understand and discern facial emotion.

According to DeBusk and Austin (2011), the ability to read faces can vary based on the

cultural background of the participant. In this study participants were separated based on cultural

background. The participants were then shown pictures of models displaying angry, happy, and

sad expressions. Models being displayed were also of varying cultural background. The

conclusion of the study found that participants tended to be better at reading sad and angry

emotions of their own culture, but found no significant difference in ability to read happy

emotions across cultures. This provides evidence toward the importance of context in relation to

accuracy of interpreting emotion.

The context of the situation isnt the only contributing factor relating to a persons ability

to accurately recognize an emotion. Emotional intelligence, or the ability to express and

understand ones own emotions as well as the emotions of another, has an influence on the skill

of perceiving emotion according to Dodonova and Dodonov (2012). They had participants take a

test for placement on a scale of emotional intelligence. Once they had been separated by

Emotional Intelligence, participants were then asked to judge whether or not the test face was the
EI AND ACCURACY IN EMOTIONAL RECOGNITION 4

same as one of the faces that had been previously presented to them. Participants were given the

choice of responding with Yes or No and the response latency of the answers were recorded.

The results of the testing showed that response times for the No option decreased as

participant Emotional Intelligence (EI) increased, but didnt show any relation between the

Yes response and participant EI. Even though there are differences in the two response, the

results would appear to show that EI does influence the speed of processing emotions (Dodonova

& Dodonov, 2012). DeBusk and Austin (2011) also included a scale for emotional intelligence in

their examination of cultural effects on the interpretation of emotion, but found no significant

impact on accuracy of the participants.

Another factor in understanding facial expressions is how often a person is exposed to the

facial expression. In an article by Manuel Calvo, Aida Gutirrez-Garcia, Andrs Fernndez-

Martin, and Lauri Nummenmaa (2014) they had were able to show that accuracy and speed in

recognizing facial expression increased in faces that participants had been exposed to more. This

showed that familiarity of expressions plays an important role in ability to understand as well.

A study by Ciro Civile and Sukhvinder S. Obhi (2016) was able to show yet another

influence on discerning facial expressions. They study focused on participants social power and

split them into three groups of high, neutral, and low. They were then presented images of

models who would display certain facial expressions, and display body positioning that was

either congruent or incongruent with the expression. When tested, the participants who had been

categorized into the high power setting were not affected at all by body position, while the

neutral and low conditions scored significantly lower when the bodies were incongruent

with facial expressions. This shows that both social power and body positioning can have

significant impact on how a person is able to understand facial expression.

EI AND ACCURACY IN EMOTIONAL RECOGNITION 5

A persons status over others also relates strongly to how well they are able to perceive

the emotion of others. In a study by Marianne Schmid Mast and Annick Darioly (2014),

researchers wanted to see if there was a difference in the pervception of emotions for superiors

and for subordinates. Superiors were contacted by researchers and sent two questionnaires. They

were to take one test themselves and give another to a subordinate of their choosing. Age, sex,

educational level, job activity, and years employed at the company. The descriptions were for

control because researchers knew of other variables that affect a persons ability to accurately

perceive emotion, or emotion recognition accuracy (ERA), as it is defined in the study.

According to their research, they already knew that older age reduces ERA and women

typically have better ERA than men. Educational level was taken as a proxy for intelligence

which is also an indicator for ERA, and years employed was take on the suspicion that working

at the company longer would improve ERA. Once all the information had been gathered,

researchers found their hypothesis had been correct. Results showed that superiors had

significantly better ERA than their subordinates.

Another study into the context surrounding emotion rcognition comes from Mattarozzi,

Todorov, Codispoti (2015). In this study, the researchers were interested in finding how the

context surrounding neutral faces can lead individuals to perceive certain characteristics about

the face. Participants were presented with the neutral images in the context of a fake newspaper

article with headlines describing what the person in the image had done. What they had found

was that participants would remember non-existent characteristics of the neutral faces when

asked later on. The memories would be related to what the headline had implied about the image.

Even outlook, mental illness, and whether the presented information is static can affect

how we take in emotional information. In a study by Nelson Torro-Alves et al. (2016) they
EI AND ACCURACY IN EMOTIONAL RECOGNITION 6

showed how social anxiety, and static and dynamic information interacted. The researchers in the

study rated participants on level of social anxiety using the Social Phobia Inventory (SPI), then

separated them into two conditions, one being shown dynamic images of emotion, while the

other was shown static images. Each condition contained a variation of participants who were

rated with high and low anxiety levels based on the SPI.

At the end of the study, the results indicated that individuals with higher anxiety may

have an advantage in recognizing emotion in static images. The dynamic images on the other

hand seemed to have little or no impact between the two levels of anxiety. These results further

exemplify the impacts of how information is presented in relation to the weay information is

perceived.

Continuing with the idea of outlook affecting emotional processing, we looked at the

study by Lodder, Scholte, Goossens, Engels, and Verhagen (2015) on the way loneliness affects

social monitoring. In this study, they were wanted to see how a persons feeling of loneliness

changed how closely they viewed emotional cues in their environment.

The study was based on the theory of the need to belong which talks about how when a

person feels that they dont belong, they will become uncomfortable and work toward belonging

in their social environment. In order to do this, they will heighten their senses toward cues in the

social environment in order to better react to them and improve their standing. Participants were

shown two emotion recognition tasks and given a questionnaire in to measure level of loneliness.

The order of the two emotion recognition tasks was randomized and separated by a simple eight

question quiz about unrelated issues, such as weather, as a filler task.

The first emotion recognition task was a short video. Participants were shown 10 s clips

of a face morphing from a neutral expression to a full expression of the motion being displayed.
EI AND ACCURACY IN EMOTIONAL RECOGNITION 7

Participants were then asked to reply with what emotion they believed they had been shown.

Speed and accuracy were recorded. The second task was a micro-expression task. In this task,

individuals would see a neutral face that was then briefly replace by the same model expressing

an emotion. When the face was replaced varied to prevent participants from learning when to

observe the emotion.

Loneliness was measured with the UCLA Loneliness Scale version 3 (Lodder et al.,

2015) which is a 20 item scale that is measured on a 4-point scale ranging from 1 = never to 4

= always. The results showed no conclusive evidence of loneliness having any effect on the

emotion recognition tasks, but did show lonelier participants did focus more on making eye

contact. This could imply that the eyes have a large impact on interpersonal understanding.

Most of these studies were able to quantify some degree of Emotional Intelligence by

using a self-reported scale for participants. A reliable scale that was used by DeBusk and Austin

(2011) is the one developed and tested by Schutte, et al. (1998). During the testing of the scale,

346 participants responded to an original list of 62 items. When researchers had studied their

responses, it was decided that only a 33-item scale was necessary. The conclusion of the study

also stated that the scores from the scale was able to measure six important factors.

Among these six factors, the scale showed a correlation to attention to feelings and

emotional clarity. It was also able to predict first-year college grades, and found that women

scored much higher than men which relates to the results of previous studies on emotional skills

(Schutte et al., 1997). The portion of the studies that interests us as well as the previous

researchers is where it relates to emotion.

All of these studies found that there are differences in facial recognition depending how

what is measured and the context of the situation. Dodonova and Dodonov (2012) also found a
EI AND ACCURACY IN EMOTIONAL RECOGNITION 8

relation between emotional intelligence and the process of emotion recognition. What neither

study focuses on is the area that participants focus on while interpreting what emotion the face in

front of them is displaying.

The question we aim to answer is: What portion of the face does a person need in order to

accurately recognize the emotion, and how does emotional intelligence affect the accuracy? The

ability to accurately define what emotion a person is experiencing can be useful in a wide array

of situations in the daily living of most people. These uses could range from personal

relationships, to professionals ones. Knowing what portions of the face are most important in

accurately recognizing emotions could lead to the development of the tools to help individuals

better prepare for any situation where the identifying of emotions could be vital.

In order to discern what is important to the development of these tools we plan to give

participants the self-report scale for EI and show them a pool of faces that vary in emotions

expressed. We will take each of these photos and separate them in half. Each participant will be

shown images of whole faces, as well as the upper and lower halves of each face. They will give

responses judging what the emotions of each face or half-face are and accuracy of answers will

be recorded. Their eye movements will also be track so we can find exactly what parts of the

faces participants focus one while discerning the emotion.

We hypothesize that changing what part of the face is presented will be detrimental to

participants with both high and low EI scores. This means that we expect to see a main effect in

both high EI, and low EI participants in relation to accuracy. Humans developed to take the

entire face in as one piece of information, and the removal of a portion of the face would likely

cause a disruption in the processing of emotion. Another predicted effect is that high EI

participants will be more accurate when presented with whole faces, but will have similar
EI AND ACCURACY IN EMOTIONAL RECOGNITION 9

accuracy to low EI participants when presented with partial faces, which would show an

interaction effect in the results. We also would expect to find that one portion of the face will be

more useful in identifying emotion than the other. As an example: the top half, containing the

eyes and forehead, being more likely to produce accurate results when compared to the bottom

half.

Method

Participants

The participants in this study will consist of 80 undergraduate students from Minnesota

State University of Moorhead. Most of the participants will be enrolled in psychology courses

given at the college. The participants will voluntarily sign up on a bulletin board in the

psychology department, or by coming to test when researchers display a sign to invite walk-

ins. The study will be called Emotional Intelligence and Recognition of Expression. Many of

the students in the study will be given extra credit for their participation. Participants will take

the study individually and will be separated into two groups based on high and low EI scores

after all trials have been run. All participants will be treated according to the American

Psychological Association ethical guidelines.

Materials

The materials in this study that will be used include a self-evaluation of EI, which will be

taken in a paper and pencil format. Participants will also be shown the faces via a TOBII eye-

tracker and will respond using a keyboard.

Emotional Intelligence Scale. The scale has 33 items that participants will scale

themselves on using a 5-point response scale ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly

Agree) (Schutte et al., 1997). Three of these items will be reverse scored. The total scores can
EI AND ACCURACY IN EMOTIONAL RECOGNITION 10

range from 33 to 165 and will be used to separate participants into groups of high and low EI

values. One example question from the scale is: (6) Some of the major events in my life have led

me to re-evaluate what is important and not important.

Tobii Eye-Tracker. The focus of the eyes will be monitored with the Tobii X120 eye-

tracking system (Tobii Technology, Falls Church, VA) with the control and calibration software,

Tobii Studio (Tobii), running on a separate Intel Core computer running Windows 7. The

monitor used with the eye-tracker will be a 21-in CRT (NEC, Itasca, TX) set to a resolution of

1280 x 1024 pixels. Eye tracking will be used only as a descriptive statistic in order to better

understand how people view whole faces. The information learned from this will help us to

better understand which parts of the face are most important in understanding emotion.

Design

This study will be a 3 x 2, within-subjects design where we will have three levels for face

presented: whole face, upper face, and lower face, with another two levels for EI being

high and low. The goal is to identify if there is a difference between the accuracy of a

persons ability to recognize emotion in a face in relation to their EI and identify if there is an

effect on ability to recognize emotion if only a segment of the face is shown, rather than the

entire face. One independent variable will be the persons EI level. Participants will be separated

into two levels: high and low EI, based on a median split of the sample. The other

independent variable will be the faces presented. The faces will have three levels: whole face,

upper face, and lower face. The quasi variable will be the gender of the participant involved

(male or female). The dependent variable will be the number of correct emotions that are

recognized.

Procedure
EI AND ACCURACY IN EMOTIONAL RECOGNITION 11

Participants will be run individually after being informed verbally of what they can

expect to undergo in the study and what tasks they will be completing. They will then enter the

felt tent with the TOBII where they will be able to begin testing when ready. Upon starting the

testing, participants will be shown a series of six different facial emotions on the monitor and

will respond with what emotion they believe is being shown: surprise, happiness, fear, disgust,

sadness, and anger

Once the participant has respond to all of the images, whole face, upper face, and lower faces,

they will be asked to complete a self-reported measure of EI. This test will allow researchers to

evaluate the participants EI. Participants will then be debriefed on the study on what they

contributed.

Results

The results of this study will be conducted using a two-way, within-subjects ANOVA.

An alpha level of .05 will be used in determining statistical significance. Participants will then be

separated into groups of high and low EI based on the midpoint of possible scores of the test.

Accuracy of emotion recognition will be compared between the high and low groups. The

comparison between scores will be made using a two-way ANNOVA test. Of the three levels

for portion of face presented, we predict that the whole face situation will receive the most

accurate responses, with the high EI group giving significantly more accurate responses. We

also expect to see no statistical significance between high and low groups response

accuracy when only shown portions of faces.

EI AND ACCURACY IN EMOTIONAL RECOGNITION 12

References

American Psychological Association (2002). Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of

Conduct. American Psychologist, 57, 1060-1073. Doi: 10.1037/0003-006.57.12.1060

Calvo, M. G., Gutirrez-Garcia, A., Fernndez-Martin, A., & Nummenmaa, L. (2014)

Recognition of Facial Expressions of Emotion is Related to their Frequency in Everyday

Life. Journal of nonverbal Behavior, 38, 549-567

Civile, C., & Sukhvinder, S. O. (2016) Power Eliminates the Influence of Body Posture on Facial

Emotion Recognition. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 40, 283-299

DeBusk, K.P.A, & Austin, A. J. (2011) Emotional Intelligence and Social Perception.

Personality and Individual Differences, 51, 764-768

Dodonova, Y. A., & Dodonov, Y. S. (2012) Speed of emotional information processing and

emotional intelligence. International Journal of Psychology, 47, 429-437.

Lodder, M. A., Scholte, R. H., Goossens, L., Engels, R. C. M. E., & Verhagen, M. (2016)

Loneliness and the Social Monitoring System: Emotion Recognition and Eye Gaze in a

Real-Life Conversation. British Journal of Psychology, 107, 135-153.

Mast, M. S., & Darioly, A. (2014) Emotion Recognition Accuracy in Hierarchical Relationships.

Swiss Journal of Psychology, 73, 69-75.

Mattarozzi, K., Todorov, A., & Codispoti, M. (2015) Memory for Faces: The Effect of Facial

Appearance and the Context in which the Face is Encountered. Psychological Research,

79, 308-317.

Schutte, N.S., Malouff, J. M., Hall L. E., Haggerty, D. J., Cooper, J. T., Golden, C. J., &

Dornheim, L. (1998) Development and validation of emotional intelligence. Personality

and Individual Differences, 25, 167-177.

EI AND ACCURACY IN EMOTIONAL RECOGNITION 13

Torro-Alves, N., Oliveira Bezerra, I. A., Claudino, R. G., Rodrigues, M. R., Machado-de-Sousa,

J. P., Lima Osrio, F., & Crippa, J. A. (2016) Facial Emotion recognition in Social

Anxiety: The Influence of Dynamic Information. Psychology and Neurosciience, 9, 1-11.