This study examines the effects of mood and empathy on the perception of emotion in photographic faces. Davis's (1980) Interpersonal Reactivity Index was used to obtain trait empathy scores for participants in part 1 of the study. Part 2 used Autobiographical Recall to induce a sad, neutral or happy mood. Participants were then asked to rate the level of emotional expressivity present in each photo presented on an eleven point scale. Three separate photo sets (sad, neutral, happy) were made up of 5 photos each. A 3x2x3 mixed model ANOVA was used to analyze emotional intensity ratings. No statistically significant results were obtained. However, mean scores for high empathy individuals indicated that these participants saw less emotional expressivity in photos for all three photo sets. These results are similar to those of clinically depressed patients and give evidence for a potentially strengthened model for studying depression experimentally within a laboratory setting.
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