Perceptual learning and recognition confusion reveal the underlying relationships among the six basic emotions

ABSTRACT

The six basic emotions (disgust, anger, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise) have long been considered discrete categories that serve as the primary units of the emotion system. Yet recent evidence indicated underlying connections among them. Here we tested the underlying relationships among the six basic emotions using a perceptual learning procedure. This technique has the potential of causally changing participants’ emotion detection ability. We found that training on detecting a facial expression improved the performance not only on the trained expression but also on other expressions. Such a transfer effect was consistently demonstrated between disgust and anger detection as well as between fear and surprise detection in two experiments (Experiment 1A, n = 70; Experiment 1B, n = 42). Notably, training on any of the six emotions could improve happiness detection, while sadness detection could only be improved by training on sadness itself, suggesting the uniqueness of happiness and sadness. In an emotion recognition test using a large sample of Chinese participants (n = 1748), the confusion between disgust and anger as well as between fear and surprise was further confirmed. Taken together, our study demonstrates that the “basic” emotions share some common psychological components, which might be the more basic units of the emotion system.

KEYWORDS:

• Basic emotion
• facial expression
• emotion detection
• discrete
• perceptual learning

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by MOST 2015CB351800, NSFC 31421003, NSFC 61621136008, NSFC 61527804, and NSFC 31671168. We thank the Programme of Mass Creativities Workshops from the Science and Technology Committee of Chongqing for their help with the recruitment of participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by MOST [grant number 2015CB351800], NSFC [grant number 31421003, grant number 61621136008, grant number 61527804, and grant number 31671168].