MER-R1: Multimodal Emotion Reasoning via Slow-Fast Thinking Synergy

arXiv:2606.27652v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We find that explicit reasoning does not necessarily translate into better multimodal emotion recognition (MER) accuracy, even though it makes predictions more interpretable. Specifically, for reasoning-based MLLMs, fast thinking by triggering direct answers often outperforms slow thinking after deliberative reasoning. Our empirical analyses show that fast thinking improves recall with broader and more confident predictions, whereas slow thinking f...