A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words: Emotion Recognition and Qualitative Impressions of Armand Henrion?s Self-Portraits Displaying Mixed Emotions

Researchers often study recognition of single emotions. Realistic faces, however, display several emotions in quick sequence or at the same time (mixed emotions). This likely causes interindividual differences in peoples' reactions to the same situations and stimuli. We studied such differences using 11 self-portraits painted by Armand Henrion (1875-1958), in which he depicts himself as a Pierrot clown displaying different affective states. Thirty-eight adult participants (15 men) saw the self-portraits twice (one brief, then one unlimited presentation). After the first brief presentation (1-2 s), participants (i) selected the most prominent emotion (out of 20) and (ii) rated the intensity of this emotion. After the second unlimited presentation, participants performed the same selections and ratings before describing what could have caused the facial expression (qualitative data). Results emotions, sometimes differing in valence. Participants selected comparable emotions between presentations but rated them as more intense the second time. The qualitative answers complemented the selected emotions. For instance, when some participants chose 'disgust', others chose 'sadness' for the same self-portrait. The qualitative answer matched this choice, indicating that the character either all be linked to possible situations.