Alana Medina Disponett¹, Sheila To¹, Andrew Mienaltowski¹; ¹Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky, USA

Age-related deficits in negative facial emotion recognition are generally weaker in tasks using dynamic emotion expressions relative to those using static expressions. This study extended prior aging research on emotion perception by asking adults ranging from 20 to 79 years of age to observe dynamic negative emotion expressions from numerous emotion categories, including pain, in the context of an emotion identification task. Stimuli were presented in a randomized manner in blocks such that participants were asked to consider every stimulus relative to a single emotion category in a given block. Signal detection measures of sensitivity and response bias were examined for each emotion identification block. Overall, chronological age was only negatively associated with participant sensitivity to sadness. Age did not predict signal sensitivity for the other negative emotions. Additionally, bias in perceiving pain in non-pain stimuli increased with age. This bias was not associated with participant self-reported physical or mental health, nor with the participants’ tendencies to interact with people experiencing pain. These findings replicate prior research in which age differences in emotion perception were minimal when dynamic expressions were employed, but also highlight that, as we age, we may display a pain empathy bias where we perceive that others are in pain when they are expressing negative emotion.