Expressive differences for emotions in hearing impaired and with hearing individuals

Abstract

Emotion is the most common experience of all human beings, whether normal or impaired. The universal emotions like happiness, sadness, anger, fear etc. are well recognizable through facial expressions. But even though we may identify these emotions clearly, we display them differently towards different target persons. The objective of the present study is two-fold: (1) to understand the pattern of display rules of four emotions namely, happiness, anger, fear and sadness in hearing impaired and with hearing individuals in private and public contexts, and (2) to find out whether display rules of emotions are equal for all target persons i.e. parents, friends and teachers. Display Rule Assessment Inventory of Matsumoto et al. (2005) was administered to 204 hearing-impaired and 273 with hearing individuals.  The findings of the study indicate that the pattern of overall expression of emotions are different for hearing-impaired and for hearing individuals. Repeated Measure ANOVA results indicate a significant main effect of context on overall expression of both positive and negative emotions. The results also show that emotions are displayed in an amplified manner depending upon the target person. On the whole, the findings indicate that both hearing and impaired individuals regulate positive and negative emotions depending upon the target person and context.