Liberty University Feeling Bad and Looking Worse Article Summary You will read the article and then summarize the article in approximately 350 words or mor

Liberty University Feeling Bad and Looking Worse Article Summary You will read the article and then summarize the article in approximately 350 words or more.

Make sure that you include:

Title and authors of the article
Why the article was written (introduction), and what it attempts to find or answer (hypothesis section)
How it answers the question or questions it proposes (method section)
What the article found (results)
What the results actually mean (discussion)

The journal article is attached as well as an example of the journal summary. Feeling Bad and Looking Worse: Negative Affect Is
Associated with Reduced Perceptions of FaceHealthiness
Laura Mirams1*¤, Ellen Poliakoff1, Elizabeth H. Zandstra2, Marco Hoeksma2, Anna Thomas3, Wael ElDeredy1
1 School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom, 2 Unilever R&D, Vlaardingen, The Netherlands, 3 Unilever R&D, Port Sunlight,
United Kingdom
Abstract
Some people perceive themselves to look more, or less attractive than they are in reality. We investigated the role of
emotions in enhancement and derogation effects; specifically, whether the propensity to experience positive and negative
emotions affects how healthy we perceive our own face to look and how we judge ourselves against others. A
psychophysical method was used to measure healthiness of self-image and social comparisons of healthiness. Participants
who self-reported high positive (N = 20) or negative affectivity (N = 20) judged themselves against healthy (red-tinged) and
unhealthy looking (green-tinged) versions of their own and stranger’s faces. An adaptive staircase procedure was used to
measure perceptual thresholds. Participants high in positive affectivity were un-biased in their face health judgement.
Participants high in negative affectivity on the other hand, judged themselves as equivalent to less healthy looking versions
of their own face and a stranger’s face. Affective traits modulated self-image and social comparisons of healthiness. Face
health judgement was also related to physical symptom perception and self-esteem; high physical symptom reports were
associated a less healthy self-image and high self-reported (but not implicit) self-esteem was associated with more
favourable social comparisons of healthiness. Subject to further validation, our novel face health judgement task could have
utility as a perceptual measure of well-being. We are currently investigating whether face health judgement is sensitive to
laboratory manipulations of mood.
Citation: Mirams L, Poliakoff E, Zandstra EH, Hoeksma M, Thomas A, et al. (2014) Feeling Bad and Looking Worse: Negative Affect Is Associated with Reduced
Perceptions of Face-Healthiness. PLoS ONE 9(9): e107912. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0107912
Editor: Cheryl McCormick, Brock University, Canada
Received July 3, 2014; Accepted August 22, 2014; Published September 26, 2014
Copyright: ß 2014 Mirams et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: The authors confirm that all data underlying the findings are fully available without restriction. All relevant data are within the paper.
Funding: This research was funded by Unilever Research and Development: (www.unilever.co.uk). The first, second and sixth authors worked collaboratively with
the third, fourth and fifth authors, who have an affiliation with Unilever, during the study design process. Data collection and analysis was carried out by the
corresponding author at the University of Manchester. The decision to publish was taken with permission from Unilever R & D. The funders had a role in study
design, but did not have a role in data collection, analysis, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: Three of the authors have an affiliation to Unilever R & D, who funded this research study. EZ, MH and AT (Unilever R & D) were involved
in the study design process, proof reading the manuscript and were involved in the decision to publish.
* Email: L.R.Mirams@ljmu.ac.uk
¤ Current address: School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, United Kingdom
positive affect associated with feelings of sadness and lethargy. A
state of high negative affect is characterised by feelings of
psychological distress, such as nervousness and irritability, with
low negative affect associated with feelings of calmness and
serenity. Low positive affect and high negative affect are
considered to be independent dimensions and distinguishing
features of depression and anxiety, respectively [4]. Individuals
high in negative affectivity consistently report more physical
symptoms and illnesses than individuals low in negative affectivity
[5,6] despite not differing in their objectively measured health [7].
Positive and negative affectivity are thought to contribute to
subjective well-being, i.e., our sense, or perception of how we feel
in general [8] and are also linked with more specific selfperceptions. For example, self-reported experience of positive
affect in everyday life is associated with a positive self-concept
(high self-esteem), whereas self-reported experience of negative
affect is associated with a negative self-concept, or low self-esteem
Introduction
Rather than being a direct reflection of reality, perception is
based on an interpretation of incoming sensory information [1].
Emotions can drive attentional and interpretational biases, leading
to distortions in perception. Someone who is anxious about their
health, for example, might pay attention to ambiguous bodily
sensations, be biased to interpret these sensations as symptoms of
illness and as a result, perceive themselves to be less healthy than
they are in reality [2]. The purpose of the current study was to
investigate whether differences in the propensity to experience
positive and negative emotions affects not only how healthy we
feel, but also how healthy we perceive our own face to look and
how we judge ourselves against others.
Positive and negative affectivity are dispositional traits defined
by tendencies to experience a range of pleasant or unpleasant
emotions [3]. A state of high positive affect is characterised by
pleasant feelings such as enthusiasm and alertness; with low
PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org
1
September 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 9 | e107912
Emotion and Face Health Judgement
[9]. Most people in the general, adult population experience more
positive affect than negative affect [10] and have a positive selfconcept [11]. Generally, people are positively biased in their
evaluations of self-related stimuli. They prefer the letters in their
own name [12], for example, and are faster to categorise self and
positive words using the same response key, than they are to
categorise self and negative words using the same response key
[13]. These positivity biases are taken to provide implicit (i.e.,
indirect, non-conscious) indicators of self-esteem, distinct from
explicit (i.e., consciously reported) self-esteem [13]. Indeed,
implicit and explicit self-esteem are often differentially related to
other variables [9,14].
Positive and negative affect may also affect how we perceive
concrete, observable aspects of ourselves. Perhaps as a result of
harbouring positive feelings towards the self, healthy females tend
to underestimate their body size [15]. What is more, there is
evidence that healthy people perceive their own faces to look more
attractive and trustworthy than they do in reality. Epley and
Whitchurch [16] morphed photographs of participants’ faces with
images of attractive and unattractive composite faces resulting in a
set of faces varying in attractiveness. Participants were more likely,
and faster, to select an attractively enhanced face version as their
own out of line-ups containing their original and morphed image.
Individuals with higher scores on two implicit measures of selfesteem had more elevated perceptions of self-attractiveness.
Explicit (self-reported) self-esteem, however, was not associated
with enhancement in recognition; Epley and Whitchurch suggested that automatic positive associations to the self, rather than more
deliberate and controlled assessments of the self, might have driven
their enhancement effects. Verosky & Todorov [17] found a
similar enhancement effect when participant’ faces were morphed
with trustworthy and untrustworthy prototype faces; participants
viewed themselves as more similar to trustworthy looking faces,
and less similar to untrustworthy looking faces. Following this,
Farmer, McKay and Tsakiris [18] found that participants view
themselves as more similar to a person who has previously
displayed trustworthy behaviour and less similar to a person who
previously displayed untrustworthy behaviour.
Self-enhancement is thought to maintain a positive self-concept
[19], but varies between individuals [20]. There is reason to think
that individuals characterised by high negative affectivity might
lack the self-image enhancement effects characteristic of happier
people and even perceive themselves to look worse than they do in
reality. Females with eating disorders, for example, who report
high levels of negative affect [21,22] tend to overestimate their
body-size [15]. Individuals with symptoms of body dysmorphia,
who feel negatively about their appearance, have also shown
altered perceptions of their self-image compared to controls [23].
In one study [23] patients with body dysmorphia made more
accurate judgements about their disliked body parts (the size of
their nose) compared to patients without body dysmorphia. In
addition, students who self-report symptoms of body dysmorphia
have shown reduced perceptions of self-attractiveness [24]. Clerkin
and Teachman [24] used a similar morphing procedure and selfrecognition paradigm to Epley & Whitchurch [16]. They found
that students with symptoms of body dysmorphia tended to rate
unattractive versions of their face as more likely to be their own
than attractive versions, whereas students without symptoms of
body dysmorphia showed the opposite pattern (i.e., an enhancement, rather than derogation effect). There were no betweengroup differences in self-recognition in this study, however. The
majority of participants were able to accurately identify their unaltered image from line-ups containing their original photograph
and the morphed images.
PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org
The main aim of the current study was to further investigate
individual differences in perceptions of self-image. Given the links
between well-being, affectivity and subjective perceptions of health
[5,8] we investigated, first, whether the enhancement effects
characteristic of happy people are also evident when skin tone,
rather than facial symmetry is manipulated. Red skin colouration,
associated with the presence of oxygenated blood, is linked with
cardiovascular fitness and human sexuality [25]. Accordingly,
increasing the amount of redness in the skin increases perceived
healthiness and attractiveness of human faces [26]. Face health
judgement has high ecological validity as an indicator of wellbeing; we often use our facial image as a cue to healthiness. If we
can see some colour in our cheeks, we might feel healthier than if
we look pale, for example. We investigated whether the reverse
might also be true; when people feel good, do they perceive
themselves to look healthier than they do in reality? Secondly, we
investigated whether individuals characterised by generalised
negative affectivity might lack this enhancement effect, or perceive
themselves to look less healthy than they do in reality.
We manipulated healthiness of self-image by altering the skin
tone in photographs of participants’ faces. We added or subtracted
the amount of redness in photographs of participants’ faces, to
produce pink and green-tinged versions that varied in how healthy
they looked (see Figures for examples). Altering skin tone, rather
than morphing participants’ photographs with attractive and
unattractive composite faces, meant that faces differed only in how
healthy they looked (which in turn affects attractiveness), but not in
the degree to which they looked similar or dissimilar to the
participant.
To measure perceptions of self-image we developed a novel face
health judgement task using psychophysical methods. To estimate
perceptual thresholds (i.e., estimate which face version roughly
corresponded to participants internal representation of self-image),
we used an adaptive staircase procedure [27] and compared
perceptual thresholds between participants characterised by high
positive versus high negative affectivity. The former participants
were expected to perceive themselves as looking healthier than
their original photograph. The latter participants were expected to
lack this enhancement effect (perceive themselves as looking
approximately as healthy as their original photograph), or show a
derogation effect (perceive themselves as looking less healthy than
their original photograph).
Our second aim was to investigate whether positive and
negative emotionality affects how people judge self-healthiness
against others. Evidence suggests that emotions affect how we
judge ourselves against others [28,29] and in turn, that such selfother comparisons shape our self-evaluations [30–32]. Whereas
individuals with high self-esteem tend to evaluate themselves
favourably against others, which increases positive affect, individuals with low self-esteem and depressed individuals, evaluate
themselves unfavourably in relation to others, which increases
negative affect [29]. Self-other comparisons also affect how
individuals perceive their own faces. Using an adapted version
of Epley & Whitchurch’s face recognition paradigm, Zell &
Balcetis [33] found that after viewing same-gender attractive
models, students rated themselves as less attractive and selected a
less attractive version of their face as their own out of a line-up
containing their original photograph among attractive and
unattractive morphs. After viewing opposite-gender attractive
models, unattractive same-gender peers or landscapes, participants
rated themselves as more attractive and showed enhancement in
self-recognition (i.e., selected a more attractive version of their face
out of the line-up). We hypothesised that participants characterised
by high positive affect would be likely to evaluate themselves
2
September 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 9 | e107912
Emotion and Face Health Judgement
scale (.26) and in the middle (30.75–39) or lower (,30.75)
quartile on the positive affect scale, N = 32) were invited to take
part in the main phase of the study. The final sample consisted of
forty participants (aged 18–53); twenty in the high positive affect
group (15 female, M age = 24.60, SD = 8.26, M positive affect
score = 40.70, M negative affect score = 17.20) and twenty in the
high negative affect group (17 female, M age = 23.85, SD = 6.05,
M positive affect score = 30.10, M negative affect score = 34.55).
In the positive affect group, 85% of participants were Caucasian,
5% were South Asian and 10% were Black. In the negative affect
group, 75% of participants were Caucasian, 10% were South
Asian and 15% were Black. Although it might be expected that
facial reddening is perceived differently in faces of different
ethnicities, Stephen et al. [25] found that the effect of facial
reddening on apparent health of human faces does not differ
according to the ethnicity of the face being judged, or of the
observer.
favourably in comparison to others and as a result, judge
themselves as equivalent to healthier looking versions of a
stranger’s face. We expected participants characterised by high
negative affect, on the other hand, to evaluate themselves
unfavourably against others and as a result, judge themselves as
equivalent to less healthy looking versions of a stranger’s face.
To address these aims, participants completed two different
versions of the face health judgement task. In one version,
participants judged how they felt compared to healthy and
unhealthy looking versions of their own face (i.e., ‘how do I feel
compared to this version of my own face?’). In the other version,
participants judged how they felt compared to healthy and
unhealthy looking versions of a stranger’s face (‘how do I feel
compared to this version of a stranger’s face?’). Whereas the
former version of the task was intended to measure self-image, the
latter was intended to measure social comparisons; that is; whether
people see themselves as equivalent to healthy or unhealthy
looking versions of a stranger’s face (rather than measuring how
healthy they perceived a stranger’s face to look).
We also investigated the relationship between face health
judgement, subjective perceptions of health and self-esteem. We
predicted subjective perceptions of health to be positively related
to healthiness of self-image and stranger FHJ. We also expected
that people with higher self-esteem would show more favourable
face health judgement. Epley and Whitchurch found self
perception to be related to implicit, but not explicit self-esteem.
However, as face health judgment is a more deliberative and
controlled process compared to simple recognition, we included an
explicit, as well as implicit measure to determine whether face
health judgement is related to conscious or non-conscious
indicators of self-esteem.
In sum, we set out to investigate how positive and negative
emotionality affect perceptions of self-image and how people judge
self-healthiness against others, by developing a novel FHJ task.
Using this paradigm, we demonstrated individual differences in
perceptions of self-healthiness.
Questionnaire measures
The online survey also included the following questionnaire
measures:
The Patient Health Questionnaire-15 (PHQ-15). The
PHQ-15 [34] is a brief, self-administered measure of the frequency
and severity of fifteen of the most commonly experienced physical
symptoms, which account for more than 90% of symptoms seen in
primary care [34]. Participants rated how bothered they had been
by fifteen common physical symptoms such as headaches, stomach
pain, dizziness and fatigue over the past four weeks on a scale from
one (‘not bothered at all’) to two (‘bothered a lot’). Scores range
from zero to thirty, with high scores indicating a high degree of
physical symptom experience. The PHQ-15 has good internal
consistency [34,35] and test-retest reliability [36].
The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSE). The RSE [37] is
a widely used measure of self-esteem consisting of ten statements
relating to feelings about the self such as, ‘‘I feel that I’m a person
of worth, at least on an equal plane with others’’ and, ‘‘I certainly
feel useless at times’’. Respondents rated the degree to which they
agreed with each item (in accordance with how they generally feel)
on a scale from one (strongly agree) to four (strongly disagree).
Scores range from ten to forty with high scores indicating high selfesteem. The RSE has high reliability and internal consistency [38].
Method
Ethics statement
The experiment was approved by the University of Manchester
Research Ethics Committee, Manchester, UK. Informed written
consent was obtained prior to the study from all participants.
Study design and procedure
Participants in the positive and negative affect groups attended
one forty minute testing session. First, participants completed a
state version of the PANAS (indicating to what extent they felt
each emotion ‘right now’). Next, participants completed self and
stranger versions of the FHJ task, the self-esteem Implicit
Association Test (IAT) [12], and state versions of the RSE and
PHQ-15 (participants responded according to how they felt at the
present moment).
Participants and recruitment
An advertisement for participants with normal or corrected to
normal vision, without colour blindness, was placed on the
University of Manchester research volunteering website. The
advertisement included a link to an online pre-screen survey which
included the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) [4].
The PANAS consists of a list of ten positive and ten negative
feelings and emotions (e.g., active, deter…
Purchase answer to see full
attachment