Empathy and perception of emotion in eyes from the FEEST/Ekman and Friesen faces

Abstract

Photographs from the FEEST/Ekman and Friesen 60 faces set were cropped to show only the eye region and presented to participants in each of two experiments. In the first, 60 participants were required to choose which one of the six basic emotions was represented in each pair of eyes. In the second experiment, the stimuli were presented to 40 different participants who were asked to rate the intensity of expression in each pair of eyes. In both experiments participants completed the Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright (2004) empathy questionnaire. In Experiment 1 there was no relation between empathy scores and accuracy of recognition. In Experiment 2 participants mean ratings of intensity across emotions correlated significantly with their empathy scores. There was no relationship between accuracy of recognition for different emotions in Experiment 1 and the mean intensity ratings given to the same stimuli in Experiment 2. Future research should explore different aspects and measures of empathy in relation to different emotions and experimental tasks.