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Duchenne display responses towards sixteen enjoyable emotions: Individual differences between no and fear of being laughed at

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Abstract

The present study aims to identify whether individuals’ with a fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia), respond with less facially displayed joy (Duchenne display) generally towards enjoyable emotions or only those eliciting laughter. Forty participants (no vs. gelotophobia) described their feelings to scenarios prototypical for the 16 enjoyable emotions proposed by Ekman (Emotions revealed: recognizing faces and feelings to improve communication and emotional life. Times Books, New York, 2003), while being unobtrusively filmed. Facial responses were coded using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS, Ekman et al. in Facial Action Coding System: a technique for the measurement of facial movement. Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto, 2002). The gelotophobes showed less facial expression of joy compared to the non-gelotophobes (Hypothesis 1) and this effect was stronger for frequency and intensity of Duchenne displays towards laughter-eliciting enjoyable emotions than for no laughter-eliciting enjoyable emotions (Hypothesis 2). Moreover, the no gelotophobia group responded more strongly to laughter-eliciting than to no laughter-eliciting enjoyable emotions. Individuals with marked gelotophobia showed the reverse pattern, displaying less joy in laughter-eliciting emotions which may impact on their social interaction, as communication may break down when positive emotion are not reciprocated.

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Acknowledgments

This article was written thanks to the support of the research grant 100014_126967 given to Willibald Ruch and René T. Proyer by the Swiss National Science Foundation. The authors would like to thank Fabian Gander and Tobias Wyss for their valuable contribution to the data collection. We would also like to acknowledge the work of the Zurich Interaction and Expression Lab team for their help processing the video materials.

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  1. Section on Personality and Assessment, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Binzmuehlestrasse 14, Box 7, 8050, Zurich, Switzerland

    Tracey Platt, Jennifer Hofmann, Willibald Ruch & René T. Proyer

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  1. Tracey Platt
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  2. Jennifer Hofmann
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  3. Willibald Ruch
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  4. René T. Proyer
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Correspondence to Tracey Platt.

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Platt, T., Hofmann, J., Ruch, W. et al. Duchenne display responses towards sixteen enjoyable emotions: Individual differences between no and fear of being laughed at. Motiv Emot 37, 776–786 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-013-9342-9

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