The Relationship of Big Five Personality Traits, Dark Triad Personality Traits and Aggressiveness with the Recognition of Emotions in Facial Expressions

Emocionalni izrazi lica usmjeravaju socijalne interakcije čime pospješuju prilagodbu i funkcioniranje pojedinca, a sposobnost njihovog prepoznavanja mogla bi biti povezana sa stabilnim crtama ličnosti. Cilj provedenog istraživanja bio je ispitati povezanost crta petofaktorskog modela ličnosti, crta tamne trijade i agresivnosti s točnosti prepoznavanja jednoznačnih te kategorizacijom višeznačnih emocionalnih i neutralnih izraza lica. Sudjelovalo je 207 ispitanika koji su ispunili test prepoznavanja emocija koji je, osim standardnih „prototipskih“ jednoznačnih izraza šest osnovnih emocija, sadržavao i višeznačne i neutralne izraze lica te niz upitnika ličnosti: Upitnik velikih pet crta ličnosti, Upitnik narcističke ličnosti, Test makijavelizma, Skalu samoprocjene psihopatije i Upitnik agresivnosti. Prije ispitivanja povezanosti crta ličnosti i prepoznavanja emocija ispitana je općenita točnost prepoznavanja emocija i obrasci pogrešnog prepoznavanja pojedinih izraza lica. Rezultati su potvrdili nalaze prijašnjih istraživanja pri čemu je razina točnosti bila najviša za emocionalni izraz radosti, a najniža za emocionalni izraz straha. Što se tiče crta ličnosti, rezultati su pokazali značajnu pozitivnu povezanost otvorenosti za iskustva i prepoznavanja emocionalnih izraza straha, otvoreniji pojedinci bili su točniji u njihovom prepoznavanju. Taj se nalaz objašnjava njihovom estetskom osjetljivosti i u kontekstu hipoteze o čestini pojavljivanja emocionalnih izraza. Također, dobivena je značajna pozitivna povezanost psihopatije i kategorizacije neutralnih izraza lica kao izraza gađenja, pojedinci s izraženijom crtom psihopatije češće su neutralne izraze kategorizirali kao emocionalne izraze gađenja, što se objašnjava u kontekstu njihovih socijalnih interakcija i u okviru evolucijske psihologije. Povezanosti ostalih razmatranih varijabli nisu se pokazale značajnima. Osim empirijskog doprinosa, dobiveni nalazi pružaju smjernice za praktične intervencije.Facial expressions of emotions guide social interactions, thus enhancing adaptation and functioning of an individual, and the ability to recognize them could be related to stable personality traits. This research aimed to examine relationship of Big Five personality traits, Dark Triad personality traits, and aggressiveness with the accuracy of recognizing unambiguous and the categorization of ambiguous emotional and neutral facial expressions. Two hundred and seven subjects participated in the study who completed the emotion recognition test, which, besides the standard "prototypical" unambiguous expressions of six basic emotions, also contained ambiguous and neutral facial expressions, as well as series of personality questionnaires: Big Five Inventory, Narcissistic Personality Inventory, Test of Machiavellianism, Self-Report Psychopathy Scale and Aggression Questionnarie. Before examining the effects of personality traits on emotion recognition, general recognition of emotions and patterns of errors were inspected. Results confirmed earlier findings, with the level of accuracy being highest for happy expressions and lowest for fear expressions. Regarding relationship of the personality traits, results showed that openness to experience was associated with recogniton of emotional expressions of fear, more open individuals were more accurate in their recognition. This finding is discussed by account of their aesthetic sensitivity and in the context of frequency-of-occurrence hypothesis. Also, psychopaty was associated with categorization of neutral expressions as emotional expressions of disgust, individuals with a more pronounced psychopaty trait were more prone to categorize neutral expressions as emotional expressions of disgust, which is discussed in the context of their social interactions and within the framework of evolutionary psychology. The relationships of other considered variables did not prove to be significant. Except from empirical contributions, these study findings provide guidelines for practical interventions