Mood and hormonal effects on facial emotion detection: the role of depressive symptoms, oral contraceptive use, and premenstrual symptoms

Abstract

Past research has suggested altered facial emotion detection (FED) with depressive symptoms, oral contraceptive (OC) use, and premenstrual symptoms. Altered FED may contribute to and maintain negative mood associated with OC side effects, premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), and other depressive disorders. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of depressive symptoms, OC use, and premenstrual symptoms on FED using a novel task that examines detection thresholds. A sample of 163 participants (37 OC using women, 72 freecycling (FC) women, 35 men, 19 other hormonal contraceptive using women) completed the Facial Emotion Detection Task. The task used neutral to emotional facial expression morphs (15 images per morph), and participants indicated what emotion they detected for each image within the progressive intensity morph. For all six basic emotions (happy, sad, angry, fearful, surprise, disgust) two types of scores were calculated: accuracy of responses and the intensity within the morph at which the correct emotion was detected (image number). Higher depression symptoms were associated with earlier (i.e., lower intensity) detection across overall emotions. [...]