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. 2022 Nov 25:13:1050068.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1050068. eCollection 2022.

An ingroup disadvantage in recognizing micro-expressions

Qi Wu  1   2 , Kunling Peng  1   2 , Yanni Xie  1   2 , Yeying Lai  1   2 , Xuanchen Liu  1   2 , Ziwei Zhao  1   2
Affiliations

An ingroup disadvantage in recognizing micro-expressions

Qi Wu et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

Micro-expression is a fleeting facial expression of emotion that usually occurs in high-stake situations and reveals the true emotion that a person tries to conceal. Due to its unique nature, recognizing micro-expression has great applications for fields like law enforcement, medical treatment, and national security. However, the psychological mechanism of micro-expression recognition is still poorly understood. In the present research, we sought to expand upon previous research to investigate whether the group membership of the expresser influences the recognition process of micro-expressions. By conducting two behavioral studies, we found that contrary to the widespread ingroup advantage found in macro-expression recognition, there was a robust ingroup disadvantage in micro-expression recognition instead. Specifically, in Study 1A and 1B, we found that participants were more accurate at recognizing the intense and subtle micro-expressions of their racial outgroups than those micro-expressions of their racial ingroups, and neither the training experience nor the duration of micro-expressions moderated this ingroup disadvantage. In Study 2A and 2B, we further found that mere social categorization alone was sufficient to elicit the ingroup disadvantage for the recognition of intense and subtle micro-expressions, and such an effect was also unaffected by the duration of micro-expressions. These results suggest that individuals spontaneously employ the social category information of others to recognize micro-expressions, and the ingroup disadvantage in micro-expression stems partly from motivated differential processing of ingroup micro-expressions.

Keywords: Ingroup advantage; emotion perception; ingroup disadvantage; intergroup bias; macro-expression; micro-expression; recognition.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The procedure of the micro-expression recognition task in Study 1A. Note that we employ the facial images of the second author for illustration.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Mean recognition accuracies of micro-expressions of ingroup and outgroup members collapsed across two METT training conditions (Study 1A). Error bars represent standard errors.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Mean recognition accuracies of micro-expressions of ingroup and outgroup members collapsed across two METT training conditions (Study 1B). Error bars represent standard errors.
Figure 4
Figure 4
The procedure of the micro-expression recognition task in Study 1B. An example of target with green personality is presented. Note that we employ the facial images of the second author for illustration.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Mean recognition accuracies of micro-expressions of ingroup and outgroup members in Study 2A. Error bars represent standard errors.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Mean recognition accuracies of micro-expressions of ingroup and outgroup members in Study 2B. Error bars represent standard errors.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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