The interpersonal effects of anger and happiness in negotiations

Three experiments investigated the interpersonal effects of anger and happiness in negotiations. In the course of a computer-mediated negotiation, participants received information about the emotional state (anger, happiness, or none) of their opponent. Consistent with a strategic-choice perspective, Experiment 1 showed that participants conceded more to an angry opponent than to a happy one. Experiment 2 showed that this effect was caused by tracking--participants used the emotion information to infer the other's limit, and they adjusted their demands accordingly. However, this effect was absent when the other made large concessions. Experiment 3 examined the interplay between experienced and communicated emotion and showed that angry communications (unlike happy ones) induced fear and thereby mitigated the effect of the opponent's experienced emotion. These results suggest that negotiators are especially influenced by their opponent's emotions when they are motivated and able to consider them.     

The interpersonal effects of emotions in negotiations: a motivated information processing approach

Three experiments tested a motivated information processing account of the interpersonal effects of anger and happiness in negotiations. In Experiment 1, participants received information about the opponent's emotion (anger, happiness, or none) in a computer-mediated negotiation. As predicted, they conceded more to an angry opponent than to a happy one (controls falling in between), but only when they had a low (rather than a high) need for cognitive closure. Experiment 2 similarly showed that participants were only affected by the other's emotion under low rather than high time pressure, because time pressure reduced their degree of information processing. Finally, Experiment 3 showed that negotiators were only influenced by their opponent's emotion if they had low (rather than high) power. These results support the motivated information processing model by showing that negotiators are only affected by their opponent's emotions if they are motivated to consider them.     

Are you talking to me?! Separating the people from the problem when expressing emotions in negotiation

Emotions such as anger and happiness have pervasive interpersonal effects in negotiations. We propose that the nature of the effects depends on the target of the emotion, that is, whether the emotion is directed toward a person or a specific behavior. In a computer-mediated negotiation (N = 87), participants received either angry or happy messages from a simulated opponent, which were either behavior-oriented or person-directed. Behavior-oriented anger elicited larger concessions than behavior-oriented happiness, whereas person-directed anger elicited smaller concessions than person-directed happiness. This reversal could be attributed to the strategic value of the emotional expression, which was higher in the behavior-oriented condition than in the person-directed condition. These findings show that the interpersonal effects of anger and happiness depend critically on the target of the emotion.     

Longer-term consequences of anger expression in negotiation: Retaliation or spillover?

Negotiators often concede to angry partners. But what happens when they meet again? According to the spillover hypothesis, negotiators demand less from previously angry partners because they perceive them as tough. According to the retaliation hypothesis, negotiators demand more from previously angry partners because of negative impressions and a desire to get even. Experiment 1 showed that participants demanded less in later negotiations when their partner in a previous negotiation had expressed anger (rather than no emotion) and the later negotiation was with the same (rather than a different) partner. Consistent with the spillover hypothesis, this effect was mediated by inferences regarding the partner’s toughness. Experiment 2 showed that apologies reduce the negative effects of anger on impressions and desire for future interaction. Behavioral reactions were moderated by social value orientation: extending the established might/morality effect, prosocial participants responded cooperatively to an apology, whereas proselfs responded competitively.     

Your Face Says It All: Closeness and Perception of Emotional Expressions Among Females

The purpose of the present investigation was to assess whether interpersonal closeness facilitates earlier emotion detection as the emotional expression unfolds. Female undergraduate participants were either paired with a close friend or an acquaintance (n = 92 pairs). Participants viewed morphed movies of their partner and a stranger gradually shifting from a neutral to either a sad, angry, or happy expression. As predicted, findings indicate a closeness advantage. Close friends detected the onset of their partners’ angry and sad expressions earlier than acquaintances. Additionally, close friends were more accurate than acquaintances in identifying angry and sad expressions at the onset, particularly in non-vignette conditions when these expressions were void of context. These findings suggest that closeness does indeed facilitate emotional perception, particularly in ambiguous situations for negative emotions.     

Steering sheep: How expressed emotional ambivalence elicits dominance in interdependent decision making contexts

This research proposes that expressed emotional ambivalence elicits greater dominance in observers than expressed happiness or anger because ambivalence conveys deliberation and therefore submissiveness. Four laboratory studies yielded convergent findings across different measures of dominance and manipulations of emotional expressions (videos and vignettes). Study 1 showed that participants can identify the expression of tension and conflict as ambivalence and can reliably distinguish ambivalence expressions from the expression of a related emotion (sadness), as well as unrelated emotions (happiness and anger). Study 2 showed that participants intended to dominate the ambivalent partner significantly more than the happy, angry, or non-emotional partner. Study 3 provides evidence that negotiators dominated the ambivalent partner because they perceived the ambivalent partner as more deliberative, and thus submissive. Study 4 confirmed - using a different manipulation of ambivalence - that expressed ambivalence leads to perceived submissiveness because it suggests greater deliberation.     

Is this happiness I see? Biases in the identification of emotional facial expressions in depression and social phobia

The present study was designed to examine the operation of depression-specific biases in the identification or labeling of facial expression of emotions. Participants diagnosed with major depression and social phobia and control participants were presented with faces that expressed increasing degrees of emotional intensity, slowly changing from a neutral to a full-intensity happy, sad, or angry expression. The authors assessed individual differences in the intensity of facial expression of emotion that was required for the participants to accurately identify the emotion being expressed. The depressed participants required significantly greater intensity of emotion than did the social phobic and the control participants to correctly identify happy expressions and less intensity to identify sad than angry expressions. In contrast, social phobic participants needed less intensity to correctly identify the angry expressions than did the depressed and control participants and less intensity to identify angry than sad expressions. Implications of these results for interpersonal functioning in depression and social phobia are discussed.     

高确定性情绪（开心、愤怒）与低确定性情绪（悲伤）对信任的影响

本研究通过信任游戏的实验范式探讨了在与“受信任者”高/低可信赖性有关的信任线索时,具体情绪的确定性维度对信任行为的影响。实验一发现,当被试被告知“受信任者”在可信赖量表上的得分（高/低）时,个体在高确定性情绪（开心和愤怒）下的信任判断比低确定性情绪（悲伤）下的信任判断上更容易被受信任者的“可信赖性”水平的高低所影响;实验二发现,当告知被试“受信任者”的群体身份（内/外群）时,个体在高确定性情绪（开心和愤怒）下的信任判断比低确定性情绪（悲伤）下的信任判断更容易被受信任者的“内外群”身份所影响。上述结果表明,高确定性的情绪比低确定性的情绪更容易使被试的信任判断受到与“受信任者”是否值得信赖有关的线索所影响。     

There's more to emotion than meets the eye: A processing bias for neutral content in the domain of emotional prosody

Research on emotion processing in the visual modality suggests a processing advantage for emotionally salient stimuli, even at early sensory stages; however, results concerning the auditory correlates are inconsistent. We present two experiments that employed a gating paradigm to investigate emotional prosody. In Experiment 1, participants heard successively building segments of Jabberwocky "sentences" spoken with happy, angry, or neutral intonation. After each segment, participants indicated the emotion conveyed and rated their confidence in their decision. Participants in Experiment 2 also heard Jabberwocky "sentences" in successive increments, with half discriminating happy from neutral prosody, and half discriminating angry from neutral prosody. Participants in both experiments identified neutral prosody more rapidly and accurately than happy or angry prosody. Confidence ratings were greater for neutral sentences, and error patterns also indicated a bias for recognising neutral prosody. Taken together, results suggest that enhanced processing of emotional content may be constrained by stimulus modality.     

The influence of indirect and direct emotional processing on memory for facial expressions

We used the remember-know procedure (Tulving, 1985 ) to test the behavioural expression of memory following indirect and direct forms of emotional processing at encoding. Participants (N=32) viewed a series of facial expressions (happy, fearful, angry, and neutral) while performing tasks involving either indirect (gender discrimination) or direct (emotion discrimination) emotion processing. After a delay, participants completed a surprise recognition memory test. Our results revealed that indirect encoding of emotion produced enhanced memory for fearful faces whereas direct encoding of emotion produced enhanced memory for angry faces. In contrast, happy faces were better remembered than neutral faces after both indirect and direct encoding tasks. These findings suggest that fearful and angry faces benefit from a recollective advantage when they are encoded in a way that is consistent with the predictive nature of their threat. We propose that the broad memory advantage for happy faces may reflect a form of cognitive flexibility that is specific to positive emotions.     

Emotional Conception: How Embodied Emotion Concepts Guide Perception and Facial Action

ABSTRACT— This study assessed embodied simulation via electromyography (EMG) as participants first encoded emotionally ambiguous faces with emotion concepts (i.e., "angry,""happy") and later passively viewed the faces without the concepts. Memory for the faces was also measured. At initial encoding, participants displayed more smiling-related EMG activity in response to faces paired with "happy" than in response to faces paired with "angry." Later, in the absence of concepts, participants remembered happiness-encoded faces as happier than anger-encoded faces. Further, during passive reexposure to the ambiguous faces, participants' EMG indicated spontaneous emotion-specific mimicry, which in turn predicted memory bias. No specific EMG activity was observed when participants encoded or viewed faces with non-emotion-related valenced concepts, or when participants encoded or viewed Chinese ideographs. From an embodiment perspective, emotion simulation is a measure of what is currently perceived. Thus, these findings provide evidence of genuine concept-driven changes in emotion perception. More generally, the findings highlight embodiment's role in the representation and processing of emotional information.     

Cooperative and competitive motives enhance perceptual sensitivity to angry and happy facial expressions

The interdependent motives of cooperation and competition are integral to adaptive social functioning. In three experiments, we provide novel evidence that both cooperation and competition goals enhance perceptual acuity for both angry and happy faces. Experiment 1 found that both cooperative and competitive motives improve perceivers?? ability to discriminate between genuine and deceptive smiles. Experiment 2 revealed that both cooperative and competitive motives improve perceivers?? perceptual sensitivity to subtle differences among happy and angry facial expressions. Finally, Experiment 3 found that the motivated increase in perceptual acuity for happy and angry expressions allows perceivers to overcome the effects of visual noise, relative to unmotivated control participants. Collectively, these results provide novel evidence that the interdependent motives of cooperation and competition can attune visual perception, accentuating the subjectively experienced signal strength of anger and happiness.     

The influence of postural emotion cues on implicit trait judgements

Perceptions of others’ traits (e.g., trustworthiness or dominance) are influenced by the emotion displayed on their face. For instance, the same individual appears more trustworthy when they express happiness than when they express anger. This overextension of emotional expressions has been shown with facial expression but whether this phenomenon also occurs when viewing postural expressions was unknown. We sought to examine how expressive behaviour of the body would influence judgements of traits and how sensitivity to this cue develops. In the context of a storybook, adults (N?=?35) and children (5 to 8 years old; N?=?60) selected one of two partners to help face a challenge. The challenges required either a trustworthy or dominant partner. Participants chose between a partner with an emotional (happy/angry) face and neutral body or one with a neutral face and emotional body. As predicted, happy facial expressions were preferred over neutral ones when selecting a trustworthy partner and angry postural expressions were preferred over neutral ones when selecting a dominant partner. Children’s performance was not adult-like on most tasks. The results demonstrate that emotional postural expressions can also influence judgments of others’ traits, but that postural influence on trait judgments develops throughout childhood.

     

A quick eye to anger: An investigation of a differential effect of facial features in detecting angry and happy expressions

Detection of angry and happy faces is generally found to be easier and faster than that of faces expressing emotions other than anger or happiness. This can be explained by the threatening account and the feature account. Few empirical studies have explored the interaction between these two accounts which are seemingly, but not necessarily, mutually exclusive. The present studies hypothesised that prominent facial features are important in facilitating the detection process of both angry and happy expressions; yet the detection of happy faces was more facilitated by the prominent features than angry faces. Results confirmed the hypotheses and indicated that participants reacted faster to the emotional expressions with prominent features (in Study 1) and the detection of happy faces was more facilitated by the prominent feature than angry faces (in Study 2). The findings are compatible with evolutionary speculation which suggests that the angry expression is an alarming signal of potential threats to survival. Compared to the angry faces, the happy faces need more salient physical features to obtain a similar level of processing efficiency.     

The world smiles at me: self-referential positivity bias when interpreting direction of attention

Recent research suggests that eye-gaze direction modulates perceived emotional expression. Here we explore the extent to which emotion affects interpretation of attention direction. We captured three-dimensional face models of 8 actors expressing happy, fearful, angry and neutral emotions. From these 3D models 9 views were extracted (0°, 2°, 4°, 6°, 8° to the left and right). These stimuli were randomly presented for 150 ms. Using a forced-choice paradigm 28 participants judged for each face whether or not it was attending to them. Two conditions were tested: either the whole face was visible, or the eyes were covered. In both conditions happy faces elicited most "attending-to-me" answers. Thus, emotional expression has a more general effect than an influence on gaze direction: emotion affects interpretation of attention direction. We interpret these results as a self-referential positivity bias, suggesting a general preference to associate a happy face with the self.     

内、外部情绪标注对情绪作用的ERPs研究

以往情绪标注的研究发现描述情绪面孔的情绪（外部情绪标注）可以降低被试的情绪。但是描述自己的情绪（内部情绪标注）结果如何尚存争议。研究采用了ERPs技术,以愉快和悲伤情绪面孔为实验材料,选择18名大学本科生为被试,比较了内部情绪标注、外部情绪标注及性别标注之间的差异。结果发现：外部情绪标注和性别标注相比,其LPP波幅均小于性别标注下LPP波幅,并且这种差异在Pz、CPz、Cz、FCz、Fz五个电极点均类似;而内部情绪标注和性别标注相比,其LPP波幅均小于性别标注下LPP波幅,但仅表现在Pz、CPz、Cz三个点上。这说明：无论内部情绪标注还是外部情绪标注,在命名后均能抑制情绪。研究结果支持阻断理论。     

Judgment of other people's facial expressions of emotions is influenced by their concurrent affective hand movements

We investigated whether emotional information from facial expression and hand movement quality was integrated when identifying the expression of a compound stimulus showing a static facial expression combined with emotionally expressive dynamic manual actions. The emotions (happiness, neutrality, and anger) expressed by the face and hands were either congruent or incongruent. In Experiment 1, the participants judged whether the stimulus person was happy, neutral, or angry. Judgments were mainly based on the facial expressions, but were affected by manual expressions to some extent. In Experiment 2, the participants were instructed to base their judgment on the facial expression only. An effect of hand movement expressive quality was observed for happy facial expressions. The results conform with the proposal that perception of facial expressions of emotions can be affected by the expressive qualities of hand movements.     

Effects of discrete emotions on young children's ability to discern fantasy and reality

This study examined 3- to 5-year-olds' (N = 128; 54% girls) ability to discriminate emotional fantasy and reality. Children viewed images depicting fantastic or real events that elicited several emotions, reported whether each event could occur, and rated their emotional reaction to the image. Children were also administered the Play Behavior Questionnaire and Pretend Action Tasks to assess play behaviors. Findings revealed age-related improvements in performance and biases in judgment based on the emotion depicted. Children reported that happy fantastic events could occur significantly more often than frightening and angry fantastic events and that happy real events could occur significantly more often than frightening and angry real events. Children's emotional reactions to the images but not play behaviors were significantly related to their fantasy-reality distinctions. Implications for the relation between emotions and children's fantasy-reality distinctions are discussed.     

Proactive and reactive control depends on emotional valence: a Stroop study with emotional expressions and words

We examined proactive and reactive control effects in the context of task-relevant happy, sad, and angry facial expressions on a face-word Stroop task. Participants identified the emotion expressed by a face that contained a congruent or incongruent emotional word (happy/sad/angry). Proactive control effects were measured in terms of the reduction in Stroop interference (difference between incongruent and congruent trials) as a function of previous trial emotion and previous trial congruence. Reactive control effects were measured in terms of the reduction in Stroop interference as a function of current trial emotion and previous trial congruence. Previous trial negative emotions exert greater influence on proactive control than the positive emotion. Sad faces in the previous trial resulted in greater reduction in the Stroop interference for happy faces in the current trial. However, current trial angry faces showed stronger adaptation effects compared to happy faces. Thus, both proactive and reactive control mechanisms are dependent on emotional valence of task-relevant stimuli.     

There's more to emotion than meets the eye: A processing bias for neutral content in the domain of emotional prosody

Research on emotion processing in the visual modality suggests a processing advantage for emotionally salient stimuli, even at early sensory stages; however, results concerning the auditory correlates are inconsistent. We present two experiments that employed a gating paradigm to investigate emotional prosody. In Experiment 1, participants heard successively building segments of Jabberwocky “sentences” spoken with happy, angry, or neutral intonation. After each segment, participants indicated the emotion conveyed and rated their confidence in their decision. Participants in Experiment 2 also heard Jabberwocky “sentences” in successive increments, with half discriminating happy from neutral prosody, and half discriminating angry from neutral prosody. Participants in both experiments identified neutral prosody more rapidly and accurately than happy or angry prosody. Confidence ratings were greater for neutral sentences, and error patterns also indicated a bias for recognising neutral prosody. Taken together, results suggest that enhanced processing of emotional content may be constrained by stimulus modality.