Emotional Display Rules of Visually and Hearing Impaired Students

The objective of the study is to understand the pattern of emotional display rules of visually and hearing impaired students towards different members of the society under two different situations i.e., private and public. This is to be studied for three emotions namely, happiness, sadness and anger. The Display Rule Assessment Inventory of Matsumoto Yoo, Hirayama, and Petrova (2005) was administered on all the participants. The overall expression of emotions varied from target person to target person and also from situation to situation. “Happiness” was observed to be expressed more by visually impaired than hearing impaired students towards parents, friends and teachers in private context. However, overall expression of anger was found to be more for hearing – impaired students. ANOVA results indicate significant main effect of context or situation on overall expression of both positive and negative emotions. The study indicates that impaired individuals like the normal individuals regulate both positive and negative emotions depending upon the target person and social situation.