Agreeableness and brain activity during emotion attribution decisions

Within the Big 5 model of personality, Agreeableness is a trait-dimension associated with the tendency to behave prosocially; highly agreeable people tend to be highly cooperative and altruistic. This study was designed to test for associations between Agreeableness and the way people decide the cause of another person’s emotional reaction (emotion attribution). Behavioral and neuroimaging (fMRI) data were collected while participants (n = 72) performed an emotional attribution task. During the emotion attribution task, participants decided which of two social–emotional scenes they believed caused another person’s emotional reaction. Converging evidence indicated that highly agreeable people tend to make emotional attribution decisions more quickly and exhibit greater temporoparietal junction activity during emotion attribution decisions, compared to low agreeable people.     

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.     

No evidence of other-race effect for Chinese faces in Malaysian non-Chinese population

The other-race effect (ORE) reflects poor recognition of faces of a different race to one's own. According to the expertise-individuation hypothesis, this phenomenon is a consequence of limited experience with other-race faces. Thus, similar experience with own and other-race faces should abolish the ORE. This study explores the ORE in a multi-racial country (i.e., Malaysia) by comparing Malaysian observers' face recognition for faces of a predominant racial group in Malaysia (i.e., Chinese) with faces from an uncommon group (i.e., Caucasian). Malaysian Chinese, Malays, and Malaysian Indians completed the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT) and the CFMT-Chinese. Compared with the normative scores, Malaysian observers showed poor performance in the CFMT-Caucasian. Interestingly, Malays and Malaysian Indians observers' performance was identical to that of Malaysian Chinese in the CFMT-Chinese and to the normative scores of the test. These results demonstrate the relevance of experience in shaping the ORE.     

Reappraising faces: effects on accountability appraisals,self-reported valence,and pupil diameter

Many of our emotions arise in social contexts, as we interact with and learn about others. What is not yet clear, however, is how such emotions unfold when we either react to others or attempt to regulate our emotions. To address this issue, 30 healthy volunteers reacted to or reappraised positive or negative information that was paired with neutral faces. While they were doing this task, we assessed pupillary responses. We also asked participants to provide ratings of accountability and experienced emotion. Findings indicated that appraised accountability increased in response to emotional information, and changes in accountability were associated with commensurate changes in valence reports and increased pupil diameter. During reappraisal, accountability and emotion decreased, but pupil diameter increased. The findings highlight the importance of accountability appraisals during the generation and regulation of emotional reactions to others, while also documenting pupillary increases during emotional reactivity and regulation.     

Face recognition as a predictor of social cognitive ability: Effects of emotion and race on face processing

The human face conveys important social signals when people interact in social contexts. The current study investigated the relationship between face recognition and emotional intelligence, and how societal factors of emotion and race influence people's face recognition. Participants’ recognition accuracy, reaction time, sensitivity, and response bias were measured to examine their face‐processing ability. Fifty Caucasian undergraduates (38 females, 12 males; average age = 21.76 years) participated in a face recognition task in which they discriminated previously presented target faces from novel distractor faces. A positive correlation between participants’ emotional intelligence scores and their performance on the face recognition task was observed, suggesting that face recognition ability was associated with emotional or social intelligence. Additionally, Caucasian participants recognized happy faces better than angry or neutral faces. It was also observed that people recognized Asian faces better than Caucasian ones, which appears to be contradictory to the classic other‐race effect. The present study suggests that some societal factors could influence face processing, and face recognition ability could in turn predict social intelligence.     

The paradox of emotion attribution: explanation biases perceptual memory for emotional expressions

People who explain why ambiguous faces are expressing anger perceive and remember those faces as angrier than do people who explain why the same faces are expressing sadness. This phenomenon may be explained by a two-stage process in which language decomposes a facial configuration into its component features, which are then reintegrated with emotion categories available in the emotion explanation itself. This configural-decomposition hypothesis is consistent with experimental results showing that the explanation effect is attenuated when configural face processing is impaired (e.g., when the faces are inverted). Ironically, although people explain emotional expressions to make more accurate attributions, the process of explanation itself can decrease accuracy by leading to perceptual assimilation of the expressions to the emotions being explained.     

幼儿面孔加工异族效应的眼动研究

本研究探究国内生活的幼儿在加工面孔时视觉策略上的异族效应。研究选取了在中国本地生活并且没有与异族个体有过直接接触的幼儿和成人, 完成一个学习和再认本族和异族(高加索白人)面孔的实验, 同时眼动仪记录了他们看面孔时的眼动数据。结果发现：国内生活的幼儿和成人在加工面孔时存在视觉策略上的异族效应, 即幼儿和成人均更多地看本族面孔的鼻子和嘴巴区域而更多看异族面孔的眼睛区域。此外, 相对于成人, 幼儿在加工面孔时, 更倾向于看面孔的眼睛部分, 进行局部加工。本研究结果在一定程度上支持了专家—— 新手理论, 对本族面孔更多的视觉经验将我们塑造成自身物种或种族的面孔加工专家, 从而对本族面孔更多地采取以鼻子为中心的整体化视觉加工策略。     

The role of severity and intentionality in the intensity of Schadenfreude attribution: A developmental study of Danish children

Understanding envy and schadenfreude requires complex interpersonal social cognitive abilities, such as social comparison and evaluating the Self, but also understanding agency and intentionality. Previous studies of children's development of envy/schadenfreude addressed whether children understand and experience schadenfreude as opposed to compassion/sympathy or whether children's attribution of schadenfreude is a consequence of envy provoked by a disadvantageous social comparison. In this study, we take a step further and investigate the roles that agency and severity of the damage play in mediating children's attribution of schadenfreude. The participants were 144 Danish children aged 3–9 years divided into two age groups. Children were presented with eight stories supported by pictures showing intentional versus accidental and irreparable versus reparable damage to envied objects. The results show that the intensity of envy/schadenfreude, as well as the happy victimizer phenomenon, varies depending on the severity of damage, agency and intentionality. When damage is accidental, schadenfreude is expressed with less intensity compared to when damage is intentional (led by an agent). When damage is irreparable, children attribute less intense feelings of schadenfreude compared to when it is reparable. In addition, only the older children expressed reparable damage carrying more intense schadenfreude and only in the accidental condition. In general, children consider intentional and reparable damage more intense than accidental and irreparable damage, and this is mediated by age. The results are important for understanding the developmental trajectory of children's complex emotions and for educational programmes directed towards supporting this development.     

Association Learning with Own‐ and Other‐race Faces in three‐ and six‐month old infants – A longitudinal study

This longitudinal study assessed 133 Caucasian German infants at 3 and 6 months of age to investigate the influence of own‐race and other‐race faces as visual stimuli on association learning in the visual expectation paradigm (VExP). The study is related to the findings on the other‐race‐effect (ORE) which is said to emerge at 6 months of age. Caucasian faces were used as stimuli of a familiar ethnic category, whereas African faces were used as stimuli of an unfamiliar ethnic category. There was no significant difference between the two stimulus classes in infants' reaction time (RT) to stimulus shifts at 3 months. At 6 months of age, infants' RT decreased significantly in the Caucasian faces condition but not in the African faces condition. These results indicate that the processing of other‐race versus own‐race faces by the age of 6 months, which is also the relevant age for the onset of the ORE, has an important influence on the performance on the VExP. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

员工对企业社会责任的差异化反应:基于归因理论的阐释

企业社会责任归因是指个体对企业践行社会责任背后的动机进行主观推理和判断的过程与结果, 也是影响企业社会责任发挥积极作用的关键因素。通过梳理以往研究, 从个体、领导及组织三个层面总结了影响员工企业社会责任归因的因素, 同时从社会交换和组织认同视角深入剖析企业社会责任归因对员工态度和行为的影响及作用机理。未来研究可以进一步明晰不同企业社会责任归因的独特影响因素与作用效果, 基于归因理论探索企业社会责任归因的形成机制, 同时研究多种因素对企业社会责任归因的影响, 考察归因对企业社会责任公平启发机制的影响, 并基于中国情境开展本土化研究。     

Social identity,attribution, and emotion: Comparisons of Americans,Korean Americans,and Koreans

The social identity of another person, in addition to the social identity of self, can be an important factor affecting the types of attribution judgments and emotions that individuals indicate for the other person. In April 2007, the perpetrator of the shooting incident on the Virginia Tech University campus was identified as a person who emigrated to the USA from Korea at a young age. The current study compared non‐Korean Americans, Korean Americans, Koreans in the USA, and Koreans in Korea in terms of their attributions and emotions concerning the perpetrator and the shooting incident. Participants were asked to indicate (1) the extent to which they attributed the cause of the incident to either American society or the perpetrator, (2) their emotions (e.g., upset), and (3) the extent to which they categorized the perpetrator as an American, a Korean American, or a Korean. The results indicated that non‐Korean Americans were most likely to attribute the cause of the incident to the perpetrator as opposed to American society. Non‐Korean Americans, Korean Americans, and Koreans in the United States had more negative emotions (e.g., unhappy, sad, and upset) about the incident than Koreans in Korea did. The results also indicated that individuals differed in their attributions and emotions depending on how they categorized the perpetrator. For example, categorizing the perpetrator as being a Korean was positively related to Americans’ tendency to hold the perpetrator responsible, while categorizing the perpetrator as being an American was negatively related to the tendency to hold the perpetrator responsible among Koreans in Korea. The findings may imply that social identity theory, intergroup emotion theory, and cultural orientations (e.g., individualism and collectivism) can provide insights into people's reactions to a tragic incident.     

Category contingent aftereffects for faces of different races, ages and species

Exposure to faces biases perceptions of subsequently viewed faces such that normality judgments of similar faces are increased. Simultaneously inducing such an aftereffect in opposite directions for two groups of faces might indicate discrete responding of the neural populations coding for those groups. Here we show such "category contingent" aftereffects following exposure to faces differing in eye-spacing (wide versus narrow) for European versus African faces, adult versus infant faces, and human versus monkey faces. As aftereffects reflect changes in responses of neural populations that code faces, our results may then suggest that functionally distinct neural populations code faces of different ages, races and species and that the human brain potentially contains discrete representations of these categories.     

Social contact,own-group recognition bias and visual attention to faces

The own-group recognition bias (OGRB) has been consistently linked to social contact in theoretical accounts. Indeed, social contact is assumed by most authors to underlie the perceptual expertise of out-groups' faces. However, little is known empirically about how it might impact face-processing strategies. We tested the proposition that social interaction would improve the face recognition performance of another group by modulating visual strategies for different face areas. In Experiment 1, we studied visual processes using an eye tracker during a person's first live encounter with a particular member of their own group (European) or an outgroup (African) to explore how increasing familiarity during a first interaction influences face-processing strategies. In Experiments 2 and 3, we explored the effect of simulated intergroup contact on face recognition accuracy, while simultaneously studying the impact of contact on visual attention strategies that occur during recognition (Experiment 2) and encoding (Experiment 3). The results showed a strong OGRB and a difference in visual processes based on the ethnic group of the targets. Although a single interaction is not sufficient to reduce the OGRB, familiarization during a live interaction (Experiment 1) and virtual social contact (Experiment 2) had an impact on the visual strategies employed.     

What the face and body reveal: in-group emotion effects and stereotyping of emotion in African American and European American children

This study examined whether 3- to 7-year-old African American and European American children’s assessment of emotion in face-only, face + body, and body-only photographic stimuli was affected by in-group emotion recognition effects and racial or gender stereotyping of emotion. Evidence for racial in-group effects was found, with European American children being more accurate when assessing emotion in European American photographs than African American photographs for some emotions. African American children were either equally proficient in recognizing emotion in African American and European American photographs or were more accurate with European American photographs for some emotions. Stereotyping of emotion was also found, with boys being more often labeled with “masculine” emotions (e.g., mad) and at least some girls being more often labeled with “feminine” emotions (e.g., happy). However, stereotyping effects were found only when the face was present in the stimuli and were not found with body-only stimuli. In-group effects, however, were not affected by type of photograph (face-only, body-only, or face + body), with children being unable to recognize at least some emotions from just the body postures alone (mad). These results have important implications for how future studies assess emotion recognition in children, particularly in terms of how emotion stimuli are constructed, the diversity of the stimuli, and who judges the stimuli.     

Holistic processing of faces is intact in adults with autism spectrum disorder

Are face recognition difficulties in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) related to impaired holistic processing? Gauthier et al. [Gauthier, I., Klaiman, C., &; Schultz, R. T. (2009). Face composite effects reveal abnormal face processing in Autism spectrum disorders. Vision Research, 49, 470–478. doi:10.1016/j.visres.2008.12.007] used the face composite task in adolescents with autism and found a congruency effect that was not modulated by alignment, a result which was interpreted as reflecting qualitatively different face processing mechanisms. In the present study we tested adults with ASD in a composite face task where presentation times were manipulated and further explored whether these participants were sensitive to holistic information in faces using a new version of the composite task: VHFPT 2.0 (The Vanderbilt Holistic Face Processing Test 2.0). Results suggest that adults with ASD process faces holistically and that their facial identity processing abilities are qualitatively similar and as efficient as that of typical adults. The difference between the results of Gauthier et al. (2009) with adolescents and the results with adults here reported are interpreted in terms of a developmental delay.     

Applying a bifactor model to the functions of relational aggression: Associations with hostile attribution biases and difficulties with emotion regulation

Previous research suggests that reactive and proactive aggression likely have distinct underlying mechanisms that uniquely contribute to the perpetration of each as a result of faulty cognitive and emotional processes. Still, very little work has examined the association of the functions of relational aggression with emotion dysregulation and hostile attribution biases. In addition, it is important to examine relational aggression in its pure and co-occurring functions given that past work finds reactive and proactive aggression to occur both jointly and distinctly. Thus, the current study employed a bifactor model to distinguish between pure reactive, pure proactive, and co-occurring relational aggression in emerging adulthood (N = 647, M_age = 19.92, SD = 2.83), a developmental time period for which relational aggression is particularly prominent. To further address gaps in the relational aggression literature, indirect pathway models revealed that relational hostile attribution biases emerged as a concurrent indirect path in the relationship between emotion dysregulation and pure reactive relational aggression. Furthermore, emotion dysregulation was directly positively associated with both pure functions as well as co-occurring relational aggression, and hostile attribution biases for relational provocations were directly associated with both pure functions of relational aggression, though the association was negative for pure proactive and positive for pure reactive relational aggression. Findings highlight the potential influence of emotion dysregulation and attributing hostile intent to social situations on engaging in the different functions of relational aggression.     

Hybrid search in context: How to search for vegetables in the produce section and cereal in the cereal aisle

ABSTRACT

The own race bias (ORB) refers to a finding that faces of members of one's own racial or ethnic group are easier to recognize. Holistic processing theories suggest that the ORB might be moderated by viewing distance. Participants studied photographs of own and other race individuals and then took a recognition memory test. Viewing distance was simulated by varying the degree to which photographs were blurred (Experiment 1) and by varying photograph size (Experiment 2). Findings indicated that own race faces were better recognized, that recognition was impaired by simulated viewing distance, but the size of the ORB was not contingent upon distance.     

The flip side of the other‐race coin: They all look different to me

Poorer recognition of other‐race faces than own‐races faces has been attributed to a problem of discrimination (i.e., telling faces apart). The conclusion that ‘they all look the same to me' is based on studies measuring the perception/memory of highly controlled stimuli, typically involving only one or two images of each identity. We hypothesized that such studies underestimate the challenge involved in recognizing other‐race faces because in the real world, an individual's appearance varies in a number of ways (e.g., lighting, expression, hairstyle), reducing the utility of relying on pictorial cues to identity. In two experiments, Caucasian and East Asian participants completed a perceptual sorting task in which they were asked to sort 40 photographs of two unfamiliar identities into piles such that each pile contained all photographs of a single identity. Participants perceived more identities when sorting other‐race faces than own‐race faces, both when sorting celebrity (Experiment 1) and non‐celebrity (Experiment 2) faces, suggesting that in the real world, ‘they all look different to me'. We discuss these results in the light of models in which each identity is represented as a region in a multidimensional face space; we argue that this region is smaller for other‐race than own‐race faces.     

Ambiguity between self and other: Individual differences in action attribution

Individuals differ in their ability to attribute actions to self or other. This variance is thought to explain, in part, the experience of voice-hearing. Misattribution can also be context-driven. For example, causal ambiguity can arise when the actions of two or more individuals are coordinated and produce similar effects (e.g., music-making). Experience in such challenging contexts may refine skills of action attribution. Forty participants completed a novel finger-tapping task which parametrically manipulated the proportion of control that ‘self’ versus ‘other’ possessed over resulting auditory tones. Results showed that action misattribution peaked in the middle of the self-to-other continuum and was biased towards other. This pattern was related to both high hallucination-proneness and to low musical-experience. Findings suggest not only that causal ambiguity plays a key role in agency but also that action attribution abilities may improve with practice, potentially providing an avenue for remediation of the positive symptoms of schizophrenia.