(2018) Science and education, 9-10, 106-110. Odessa.

Olga Sannikova,
Doctor of Psychology, professor,
Head of the Department of General and Differential Psychology,
Ren Zhong,
Post-graduate student, Department of General and Differential Psychology,
South Ukrainian National Pedagogical University named after K. D. Ushynsky
4, Fontanska Doroha Str., Odesa, Ukraine This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

SUBJECTIVE PERCEPTION OF PEOPLE’S
EMOTIONAL STATES INTERPRETATION PECULIARITIES

The paper deals with the issue of examining signs according to which people’s emotional states can be interpreted by an observer: emotional experiences, feelings and their external manifestations (expressive movements, mimics, pantomimicry, voice peculiarities, etc.). The research is aimed at searching for indicators which help observers identify people’s emotions (their strength, modality, diversity, etc.). In order to obtain information about leading features of emotions and their indicators, a method of self-report (writing a non-standardized composition on the topic “People’s Emotions Interpretation”) has been applied. A group of pedagogical university students (n=55) and a group of experienced psychologists (n=12) have taken part in the experiment. The experts (professional psychologists) have been involved in the study because of their profound knowledge in the evaluation process, their high qualification, great experience in professional communication, which provide an opportunity to integrate theoretical knowledge and personal practical experience in the field of other people’s emotions interpretation. As a result of the self-reports content analysis a number of linguistic units describing external manifestations of various emotions have been distinguished. It has been found that perception and evaluation of emotional states are performed according to nonverbal communication characteristics, psychophysical manifestations, its mimic, pantomimic, expressive, behavioral signs, emotional actions, vocal means of expression, etc. When observing other people’s behavior, the students have identified such characteristics as duration, power, speed of emergence, speed of disappearance, frequency of emotions emergence. Among modal emotional characteristics, they distinguished basal emotions: joy, grief, sorrow, hatred, fear, rage. The analysis of the psychologists’ compositions has made it possible to reveal basic descriptors – the groups of semantically close concepts of such modalities as joy, anger, fear, sorrow. These results are indicative of brightness and diversity of their own emotions, and this fact contributes to more differentiated perception and interpretation of other people’s emotional states.

emotions, interpretation, expression, indicators, expressive movements, mimics, pantomimicry.

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