Eye-tracking of Facial Emotions in Relation to Self-criticism and Self-reassurance

The study explores the relation between participants’ level of self-criticism, self-reassurance, and eye gaze when looking at photographs of primary emotions. Participants completed The Forms of Self-Criticising/Attacking & Self-Reassuring Scale (FSCRS) and then a facial-emotion expression task while their eye movements were being recorded by an eye-tracker. The results indicate differences in people’s eye-gaze patterns when viewing facial-emotion expressions in relation to the level of self-criticism and self-reassurance. Specifically, participants with higher self-reassurance look more frequently at the eye region and less frequently at other facial areas and beyond the emotional faces. However, individuals with higher self-hatred look at the outside of the face more frequently than at the eyes area, and higher self-inadequacy predicted the individual would look more frequently at the eyes than at other facial areas. The results are important for understanding the role of self-criticism in relation to facial-emotion expressions and gazing, as self-criticism is a key underlying factor of all kinds of psychopathologies. Following further research, the results could be used to develop more objective diagnostics for self-criticism screening than the existing self-rating scales.