Pain and disgust: the facial signaling of two aversive bodily experiences

PloS One
Miriam KunzStefan Lautenbacher

Abstract

The experience of pain and disgust share many similarities, given that both are aversive experiences resulting from bodily threat and leading to defensive reactions. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether facial expressions are distinct enough to encode the specific quality of pain and disgust or whether they just encode the similar negative valence and arousal level of both states. In sixty participants pain and disgust were induced by heat stimuli and pictures, respectively. Facial responses (Facial Action Coding System) as well as subjective responses were assessed. Our main findings were that nearly the same single facial actions were elicited during pain and disgust experiences. However, these single facial actions were displayed with different strength and were differently combined depending on whether pain or disgust was experienced. Whereas pain was mostly encoded by contraction of the muscles surrounding the eyes (by itself or in combination with contraction of the eyebrows); disgust was mainly accompanied by contraction of the eyebrows and--in contrast to pain--by raising of the upper lip as well as the combination of upper lip raise and eyebrow contraction. Our data clearly suggests that facial expre...Continue Reading

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Citations

Mar 5, 2015·European Journal of Pain : EJP·M Kunz, S Lautenbacher
Jan 9, 2019·European Journal of Pain : EJP·Ali Khatibi, Mahdi Mazidi
Oct 20, 2018·Pain·Miriam KunzStefan Lautenbacher
Jan 31, 2019·European Journal of Pain : EJP·Joshua A RashTavis S Campbell
Dec 28, 2019·Voprosy kurortologii, fizioterapii, i lechebnoĭ fizicheskoĭ kultury·A D DubinskayaE N Gulaev
Jan 12, 2019·Pain Research & Management : the Journal of the Canadian Pain Society = Journal De La Société Canadienne Pour Le Traitement De La Douleur·J E LeeJ H Lee
May 10, 2017·Chemical Senses·Hanah A ChapmanAdam K Anderson
Dec 31, 2016·Pain Medicine : the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pain Medicine·Stefan LautenbacherMiriam Kunz
Nov 3, 2020·European Journal of Pain : EJP·Miriam KunzStefan Lautenbacher
Jul 2, 2020·Cortex; a Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior·Giada DirupoDeborah Badoud
May 7, 2020·NeuroImage·Miriam KunzPierre Rainville
May 23, 2021·Journal of Anxiety Disorders·Thomas ArmstrongKean Hsu

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
FACS

Software Mentioned

SPSS
Facial Action Coding System ( FACS
Facial Action Coding System

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