# The impact of acting training on emotion recognition and expression: a systematic review

## TL;DR

This paper reviews how acting training affects emotion recognition and expression, finding it beneficial but noting inconsistent results due to varied study designs.

## Contribution

The study systematically evaluates the impact of acting training on emotional skills across non-artistic contexts and identifies reasons for inconsistent findings.

## Key findings

- Acting-based interventions improve emotion recognition and expression in clinical, occupational, and educational settings.
- Inconsistent results arise from differences in assessment tools and training content across studies.
- The paper proposes future research directions to better understand the mechanisms behind these interventions.

## Abstract

Acting training focuses on improving actors’ emotion recognition and expression, and it has been used to strengthen individuals’ emotional skills in both artistic and non-artistic contexts. However, when examining the impact of this training on emotion recognition and expression in studies outside the arts, diverse research designs resulted in inconsistent findings or limitations for comparison across studies.

We reviewed and evaluated the research design and evidence.

The 32 included articles show that acting-based interventions have been employed across diverse areas, including clinical, occupational and educational contexts, and these interventions could improve emotion recognition and expression. We examine the possible reasons for the inconsistency found in the literature, evaluating assessment tools and training content.

We suggest addressing the underlying mechanism of the acting-based intervention’s impact on emotion recognition and expression skills and subsequently propose future research directions.

Doi: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/R2KTB.