Facial Affective Reactivity in Depression

Taken from "Patterns of Facial Affective Reactivity in Depression: A literature review of emotion elicitation using film" by Jeff Girard (in press).

Clinicians have long relied on nonverbal communication to aid in the diagnosis and assessment of psychopathological populations. Specifically, blunted or flattened displays of facial affect have long been associated with schizophrenia and depression (Marsden et al. 1975). These ratings are usually made subjectively, however, and there are many conflicting theories about how such populations respond to different types of emotion elicitation. Only careful research can properly determine what (if any) patterns of emotion reactivity can be associated with different disorders. This article will review the literature on a subset of this research. Specifically, it will focus on how patients suffering from Major Depressive Disorder differ from healthy controls in terms of facial affect when positive and negative emotions are elicited using film. Although there are many methods for eliciting emotion, film is the focus of this review because it is more naturalistic than asking participants to pose facial expressions, more immersive and engaging than pictorial stimuli, and allows for more experimental control and standardization than emotional imaginings or interviews (Gross & Levenson, 1995).

Four hypotheses about the effect of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) on facial affective reactivity have been put forth in the literature: positive attenuation (less reactivity to positive stimuli), negative potentiation (more reactivity to negative stimuli), emotion context insensitivity (less reactivity to both positive and negative stimuli), and cultural norm violation (reactivity opposite of cultural expectancy). There is strong evidence from a variety of measures in support of the Positive Attenuation Hypothesis. However, there is no evidence in support of the Negative Potentiation Hypothesis and only tentative support for the Emotion Context Insensitivity and Cultural Norm Hypotheses. More research is needed before definite conclusions can be drawn about the role of cultural norms. Reactivity to positive emotion elicitation was found to be a good indicator of prospective functioning, whereas reactivity to negative emotion elicitation was found to be a good indicator of current psychosocial functioning.

Measure	Article	Positive Attenuation	Negative Potentiation	Emotion-Context Insensitivity	Cultural Norm
Electromyography (Facial EMG)	Sakamoto et al. 1997	Yes*	-	-	No*
	Kaviani et al. 2004	No	No	No	-
	Rottenberg et al. 2005	Yes*	No	No	-
Emotion Facial Action Coding System (EMFACS)	Berenbaum et al. 1992	Yes*	No	No	-
	Tsai et al. 2003	Yes*	No	No	Yes*
	Renneberg et al. 2005	Yes*	No*	Yes*	-
	Reed et al. 2007	Yes*	-	-	-
Emotional Expressive Behavior Coding System (EEB)	Rottenberg et al. 2002	No	No	No	-
	Chentsova-Dutton et al. 2007	No	No	No	Yes*
	Chentsova-Dutton et al. 2010	Yes*	-	-	Yes*
Computer-Based Facial Action Analysis	Schneider et al. 1990	No	No	No	-
	Mergl et al. 2005	Yes*	-	-	-