Abstract
Emotion recognition, particularly of anger expressions, has a crucial adaptive and social value for human beings. Similar to other human traits, emotion recognition is highly variable among individuals and has been shown to be altered in several mental disorders. There is evidence that emotion recognition is heritable and, thus, potentially influenced by genetic factors. Different genetic approaches had shed light on the genes and pathways possibly involved in this trait and its association with mental disorders, including family, twin, candidate genes, genome-wide association studies, and polygenic risk score analyses. In this chapter, we review the evidence regarding genetic factors involved in emotion recognition, emphasizing anger and its link with psychopathology.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Abbreviations
- 5-HTT:
-
5-hydroxytryptamine (serotonin) transporter
- 5-HTTLPR :
-
Serotonin-transporter-linked promoter region
- ADHD :
-
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
- AKAP5:
-
A-kinase-anchoring protein 5 gene
- ALSPAC :
-
Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children
- ARNT2:
-
Aryl hydrocarbon receptor nuclear translocator 2 gene
- ASD :
-
Autism spectrum disorder
- BPD :
-
Borderline personality disorder
- COMT :
-
Catechol-O-methyltransferase
- ELS :
-
Early life stress
- EQ :
-
Empathy Quotient
- G × E :
-
Gene × environment interaction
- GWAS :
-
Genome-Wide Association Studies
- HPA :
-
Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal
- MAOA :
-
Monoamine oxidase A
- MAOB :
-
Monoamine oxidase B
- OXTR :
-
Oxytocin receptor gene
- PRS :
-
Polygenic risk scores
- rSMG :
-
Right supramarginal gyrus
- SCZ :
-
Schizophrenia
- SLC6A4:
-
Solute Carrier Family 6 Member 4
- SNP :
-
Single nucleotide polymorphisms
- TMEM132C :
-
Transmembrane Protein 132C
- TPH2:
-
Tryptophan Hydroxylase 2 gene
- TWAS :
-
Transcriptome-wide association study
References
Abbruzzese L, Magnani N, Robertson IH, Mancuso M (2019) Age and gender differences in emotion recognition. Front Psychol 10:2371. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02371
Acland EL, Jambon M, Malti T (2021) Children’s emotion recognition and aggression: a multi-cohort longitudinal study. Aggress Behav 47:646–658. https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.21989
Anokhin AP, Golosheykin S, Heath AC (2010) Heritability of individual differences in cortical processing of facial affect. Behav Genet 40:178–185. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-010-9337-1
Baribeau DA, Anagnostou E (2015) Oxytocin and vasopressin: linking pituitary neuropeptides and their receptors to social neurocircuits. Front Neurosci 9:335. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2015.00335
Baune BT, Dannlowski U, Domschke K et al (2010) The interleukin 1 beta (IL1B) gene is associated with failure to achieve remission and impaired emotion processing in major depression. Biol Psychiatry 67:543–549. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2009.11.004
Beaupré MG, Hess U (2005) Cross-cultural emotion recognition among Canadian Ethnic Groups. J Cross-Cult Psychol 36:355–370. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022104273656
Boll S, Gamer M (2014) 5-HTTLPR modulates the recognition accuracy and exploration of emotional facial expressions. Front Behav Neurosci 8:255. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00255
Border R, Johnson EC, Evans LM et al (2019) No support for historical candidate gene or candidate gene-by-interaction hypotheses for major depression across multiple large samples. Am J Psychiatry 176:376–387. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2018.18070881
Chen P, Harris KM (2019) Association of positive family relationships with mental health trajectories from adolescence to midlife. JAMA Pediatr 173:e193336. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2019.3336
Choi SW, Mak TS-H, O’Reilly PF (2020) Tutorial: a guide to performing polygenic risk score analyses. Nat Protoc 15:2759–2772. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41596-020-0353-1
Coleman JRI, Lester KJ, Keers R et al (2017) Genome-wide association study of facial emotion recognition in children and association with polygenic risk for mental health disorders. Am J Med Genet B Neuropsychiatr Genet 174:701–711. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajmg.b.32558
Davey Smith G, Hemani G (2014) Mendelian randomization: genetic anchors for causal inference in epidemiological studies. Hum Mol Genet 23:R89–R98. https://doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddu328
Davis ISP, Plomin R (2007) Gene–environment interactions in early development. In: Encyclopedia of stress, Elsevier, pp 122–128
De Angelis F, Wendt FR, Pathak GA et al (2021) Drinking and smoking polygenic risk is associated with childhood and early-adulthood psychiatric and behavioral traits independently of substance use and psychiatric genetic risk. Transl Psychiatry 11:586. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-021-01713-z
Del-Ben CM, Ferreira CAQ, Alves-Neto WC, Graeff FG (2008) Serotonergic modulation of face-emotion recognition. Braz J Med Biol Res 41:263–269. https://doi.org/10.1590/s0100-879x2008000400002
Erkoreka L, Zamalloa I, Rodriguez S et al (2020) Genetic modulation of facial emotion recognition in borderline personality disorder. Prog Neuro-Psychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry 99:109816. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pnpbp.2019.109816
Feczko E, Miranda-Dominguez O, Marr M et al (2019) The heterogeneity problem: approaches to identify psychiatric subtypes. Trends Cogn Sci 23:584–601. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2019.03.009
Forssman L, Peltola MJ, Yrttiaho S et al (2014) Regulatory variant of the TPH2 gene and early life stress are associated with heightened attention to social signals of fear in infants. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 55:793–801. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12181
Good CD, Lawrence K, Thomas NS et al (2003) Dosage-sensitive X-linked locus influences the development of amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex, and fear recognition in humans. Brain 126:2431–2446. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awg242
Grossmann T, Vaish A, Franz J et al (2013) Emotional voice processing: investigating the role of genetic variation in the serotonin transporter across development. PLoS One 8:e68377. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0068377
Gulamani T, Rodrigo AH, Uliaszek AA, Ruocco AC (2021) Facial emotion perception in families affected with borderline personality disorder. J Personal Disord 35:132–148. https://doi.org/10.1521/pedi_2021_35_514
Gur RE, Calkins ME, Gur RC et al (2006) The consortium on the genetics of schizophrenia: neurocognitive endophenotypes. Schizophr Bull 33:49–68. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbl055
Hartling C, Fan Y, Weigand A et al (2019) Interaction of HPA axis genetics and early life stress shapes emotion recognition in healthy adults. Psychoneuroendocrinology 99:28–37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2018.08.030
Hivert V, Sidorenko J, Rohart F et al (2021) Estimation of non-additive genetic variance in human complex traits from a large sample of unrelated individuals. Am J Hum Genet 108:786–798. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2021.02.014
Hoffner C, Badzinski DM (1989) Children’s integration of facial and situational cues to emotion. Child Dev 60:411. https://doi.org/10.2307/1130986
Hovey D, Henningsson S, Cortes DS et al (2018) Emotion recognition associated with polymorphism in oxytocinergic pathway gene ARNT2. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 13:173–181. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsx141
Hubble K, Bowen KL, Moore SC, van Goozen SHM (2015) Improving negative emotion recognition in young offenders reduces subsequent crime. PLoS One 10:e0132035. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0132035
Huetter FK, Moehlendick B, Knop D, Siffert W (2020) Lack of association of common polymorphisms linked to empathic behavior with self-reported trait empathy in healthy volunteers. Horm Behav 126:104841. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2020.104841
Johnson EC, Border R, Melroy-Greif WE et al (2017) No evidence that schizophrenia candidate genes are more associated with schizophrenia than noncandidate genes. Biol Psychiatry 82:702–708. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2017.06.033
Kikuchi AM, Tanabe A, Iwahori Y (2021) A systematic review of the effect of L-tryptophan supplementation on mood and emotional functioning. J Diet Suppl 18:316–333. https://doi.org/10.1080/19390211.2020.1746725
Koizumi A, Kitagawa N, Kondo HM et al (2013) Serotonin transporter gene-linked polymorphism affects detection of facial expressions. PLoS One 8:e59074. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0059074
Lau JYF, Burt M, Leibenluft E et al (2009) Individual differences in children’s facial expression recognition ability: the role of nature and nurture. Dev Neuropsychol 34:37–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/87565640802564424
Laukka P, Bänziger T, Israelsson A et al (2021) Investigating individual differences in emotion recognition ability using the ERAM test. Acta Psychol 220:103422. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2021.103422
Lawrence K, Kuntsi J, Coleman M et al (2003) Face and emotion recognition deficits in Turner syndrome: a possible role for X-linked genes in amygdala development. Neuropsychology 17:39–49
Legerstee MT, Haley DW, Bornstein MH (eds) (2013) The infant mind: origins of the social brain. Guilford Press, New York
Lin M-T, Huang K-H, Huang C-L et al (2012) MET and AKT genetic influence on facial emotion perception. PLoS One 7:e36143. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0036143
Liu X, Hildebrandt A, Recio G et al (2017) Individual differences in the speed of facial emotion recognition show little specificity but are strongly related with general mental speed: psychometric, neural and genetic evidence. Front Behav Neurosci 11:149. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2017.00149
Liu Z, Liu J, Zhang Z et al (2020) Facial emotion recognition and polymorphisms of dopaminergic pathway genes in children with ASD. Behav Neurol 2020:6376842. https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/6376842
Lucki I (1998) The spectrum of behaviors influenced by serotonin. Biol Psychiatry 44:151–162. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0006-3223(98)00139-5
Martin D, Croft J, Pitt A et al (2020) Systematic review and meta-analysis of the relationship between genetic risk for schizophrenia and facial emotion recognition. Schizophr Res 218:7–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2019.12.031
Martin J, Hamshere ML, Stergiakouli E et al (2015) Neurocognitive abilities in the general population and composite genetic risk scores for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 56:648–656. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12336
Migeot J, Calivar M, Granchetti H et al (2022) Socioeconomic status impacts cognitive and socioemotional processes in healthy ageing. Sci Rep 12:6048. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-09580-4
das Neves MDCL, Tremeau F, Nicolato R et al (2011) Facial emotion recognition deficits in relatives of children with autism are not associated with 5HTTLPR. Braz J Psychiatry 33:261–267. https://doi.org/10.1590/s1516-44462011000300009
Oerlemans AM, van der Meer JMJ, van Steijn DJ et al (2014) Recognition of facial emotion and affective prosody in children with ASD (+ADHD) and their unaffected siblings. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 23:257–271. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-013-0446-2
Qin Y, Kang J, Jiao Z et al (2020) Polygenic risk for autism spectrum disorder affects left amygdala activity and negative emotion in schizophrenia. Transl Psychiatry 10:322. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-020-01001-2
Rappaport LM, Carney DM, Verhulst B et al (2018) A developmental twin study of emotion recognition and its negative affective clinical correlates. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 57:925–933.e3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2018.05.028
Reddy PV, Anandan S, Rakesh G et al (2022) Emotion processing deficit in euthymic bipolar disorder: a potential endophenotype. Indian J Psychol Med 44:145–151. https://doi.org/10.1177/02537176211026795
Richter S, Gorny X, Marco-Pallares J et al (2011) A potential role for a genetic variation of AKAP5 in human aggression and anger control. Front Hum Neurosci 5:175. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2011.00175
Riess H (2017) The science of empathy. J Patient Exp 4:74–77. https://doi.org/10.1177/2374373517699267
Robinson EB, Kirby A, Ruparel K et al (2015) The genetic architecture of pediatric cognitive abilities in the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort. Mol Psychiatry 20:454–458. https://doi.org/10.1038/mp.2014.65
Schapira R, Anger Elfenbein H, Amichay-Setter M et al (2019) Shared environment effects on children’s emotion recognition. Front Psych 10:215. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00215
Shamay-Tsoory SG, Aharon-Peretz J, Perry D (2009) Two systems for empathy: a double dissociation between emotional and cognitive empathy in inferior frontal gyrus versus ventromedial prefrontal lesions. Brain 132:617–627. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awn279
Shiroma PR, Thuras P, Johns B, Lim KO (2014) Emotion recognition processing as early predictor of response to 8-week citalopram treatment in late-life depression: emotion recognition in late-life depression. Int J Geriatr Psychiatry 29:1132–1139. https://doi.org/10.1002/gps.4104
Skuse DH, Lori A, Cubells JF et al (2014) Common polymorphism in the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) is associated with human social recognition skills. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 111:1987–1992. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1302985111
Subramanian L, Hindle JV, Jackson MC, Linden DEJ (2010) Dopamine boosts memory for angry faces in Parkinson’s disease. Mov Disord 25:2792–2799. https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.23420
Suddell S, Mahedy L, Skirrow C et al (2021) Cognitive functioning in anxiety and depression: results from the ALSPAC cohort. Psychiatry Clin Psychol
Székely E, Herba CM, Arp PP et al (2011) Recognition of scared faces and the serotonin transporter gene in young children: the Generation R Study. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 52:1279–1286. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2011.02423.x
The iPSYCH-Broad autism group, the 23andMe Research Team, Warrier V et al (2018) Genome-wide analyses of self-reported empathy: correlations with autism, schizophrenia, and anorexia nervosa. Transl Psychiatry 8:35. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-017-0082-6
Tripoli G, Quattrone D, Ferraro L et al (2022) Facial emotion recognition in psychosis and associations with polygenic risk for schizophrenia: findings from the Multi-Center EU-GEI Case–Control Study. Schizophr Bull:sbac022. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbac022
Uzefovsky F, Bethlehem RAI, Shamay-Tsoory S et al (2019) The oxytocin receptor gene predicts brain activity during an emotion recognition task in autism. Mol Autism 10:12. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13229-019-0258-4
Verhallen RJ, Bosten JM, Goodbourn PT et al (2017) The oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) and face recognition. Psychol Sci 28:47–55. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616672269
Visscher PM, Wray NR, Zhang Q et al (2017) 10 years of GWAS discovery: biology, function, and translation. Am J Hum Genet 101:5–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2017.06.005
Vrijen C, Hartman CA, Oldehinkel AJ (2016) Slow identification of facial happiness in early adolescence predicts onset of depression during 8 years of follow-up. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 25:1255–1266. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-016-0846-1
Waddington F, Franke B, Hartman C et al (2021) A polygenic risk score analysis of ASD and ADHD across emotion recognition subtypes. Am J Med Genet 186:401–411. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajmg.b.32818
Wainberg M, Sinnott-Armstrong N, Mancuso N et al (2019) Opportunities and challenges for transcriptome-wide association studies. Nat Genet 51:592–599. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-019-0385-z
Wendt FR, Carvalho CM, Pathak GA et al (2020) Polygenic risk for autism spectrum disorder associates with anger recognition in a neurodevelopment-focused phenome-wide scan of unaffected youths from a population-based cohort. PLoS Genet 16:e1009036. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1009036
Wilmer JB, Germine L, Chabris CF et al (2010) Human face recognition ability is specific and highly heritable. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 107:5238–5241. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0913053107
Woodbury-Smith MR, Paterson AD, Szatmari P, Scherer SW (2020) Genome-wide association study of emotional empathy in children. Sci Rep 10:7469. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-62693-6
Xavier RM, Dungan JR, Keefe RSE, Vorderstrasse A (2018) Polygenic signal for symptom dimensions and cognitive performance in patients with chronic schizophrenia. Schizophr Res Cogn 12:11–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scog.2018.01.001
Zhu B, Chen C, Moyzis RK et al (2012) Genetic variations in the dopamine system and facial expression recognition in healthy Chinese college students. Neuropsychobiology 65:83–89. https://doi.org/10.1159/000329555
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Cabrera-Mendoza, B., Koller, D., Polimanti, R. (2023). Linking Behavior and Genetics: Psychopathology and Recognition of Anger and Other Emotions. In: Martin, C.R., Preedy, V.R., Patel, V.B. (eds) Handbook of Anger, Aggression, and Violence. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31547-3_86
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31547-3_86
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-31546-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-31547-3
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences