{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,3]],"date-time":"2026-09-03T17:28:04Z","timestamp":1788456484973,"version":"build-2803163510"},"reference-count":55,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,25]],"date-time":"2026-03-25T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1774396800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Brain Sciences"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Background: This study examined age-related differences and interrelationships among psychological symptoms, personality traits, and emotional expression styles in a community sample of 151 participants aged 10\u201377 years, spanning four age groups: adolescents, young adults, middle-aged adults, and older adults. Methods: Psychological symptoms were assessed using the SCL-90, personality traits using the Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2), and emotional expression patterns were derived from facial expression recognition via a convolutional neural network (CNN) model. Kruskal\u2013Wallis H tests were used to examine age-related differences. K-means cluster analysis was applied to identify emotional expression patterns, and logistic regression was used to construct a mental health risk screening model. Results: The young adult group (19\u201335 years) achieved the highest scores on the depression (M = 1.73) and anxiety (M = 1.61) dimensions, indicating a higher level of psychological distress during this life stage. Personality traits showed a significant developmental trajectory: neuroticism decreased with age (H(3) = 17.09, p &lt; 0.001, \u03b72 = 0.11), declining from 2.69 in the young adult group to 2.17 in the older adult group; conscientiousness increased with age (H(3) = 37.39, p &lt; 0.001, \u03b72 = 0.24), representing the most substantial age-related effect. K-means clustering identified three distinct emotional expression patterns: Cluster 1 was characterised by happiness, Cluster 2 by anger, disgust, and fear, and Cluster 3 by neutrality, sadness, and surprise. Cluster 2 exhibited the highest scores on neuroticism, anxiety, depression, and mood swings, and scored significantly higher than the other two clusters on interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, and hostility (p &lt; 0.05). Mental health risk screening indicated that 26.5% of participants were classified as high-risk. Logistic regression analysis (AUC = 0.742) showed that neuroticism was the strongest predictor of elevated mental health risk (OR = 4.58), while extraversion (OR = 0.41) and conscientiousness (OR = 0.57) were significant protective factors. Conclusions: These findings provide exploratory evidence regarding age-related patterns of psychological symptoms and personality traits in a convenience sample and offer preliminary support for personality-based mental health risk screening. Notably, the SCL-90 was employed as a screening tool rather than for clinical diagnosis. Given the unequal age group sizes, particularly the small young adult subgroup, generalisability across the lifespan should not be assumed.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/brainsci16040353","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,26]],"date-time":"2026-03-26T13:37:15Z","timestamp":1774532235000},"page":"353","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Clustering Analysis of Emotional Expression, Personality Traits, and Psychological Symptoms"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"16","author":[{"given":"Lingping","family":"Meng","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Mental Health and Psychological Sciences, Anhui Medical University, Hefei 230032, China"},{"name":"Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center, Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Hefei 230088, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Mingzheng","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center, Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Hefei 230088, China"},{"name":"Institute of Advanced Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230094, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9750-7032","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Xiao","family":"Sun","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Mental Health and Psychological Sciences, Anhui Medical University, Hefei 230032, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,25]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1037\/0033-2909.132.1.1","article-title":"Patterns of mean-level change in personality traits across the life course: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies","volume":"132","author":"Roberts","year":"2006","journal-title":"Psychol. 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