When aggressive individuals see the world more accurately: the case of perceptual sensitivity to subtle facial expressions of anger

Previous research has suggested that aggressive individuals exhibit a bias to perceive nonangry expressions as angry. Another line of thinking, however, posits that aggression is a learned response to hostile environments and should be linked to social-cognitive skills suited to such environments. If so, aggressive individuals may exhibit greater perceptual sensitivity to subtle facial cues of anger. Three studies were conducted to test this proposal. In them, participants' ability to discriminate between subtly different intensities of facial anger was tested. Aggressive participants generally displayed greater perceptual sensitivity to subtle cues of facial anger. This pattern could not be explained in terms of response bias and was specific to angry expressions. The results thus support the idea that aggression is associated with social-cognitive skills rather than bias and ineptitude.     

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.     

Top-down guidance in visual search for facial expressions

Using a visual search paradigm, we investigated how a top-down goal modified attentional bias for threatening facial expressions. In two experiments, participants searched for a facial expression either based on stimulus characteristics or a top-down goal. In Experiment 1, participants searched for a discrepant facial expression in a homogenous crowd of faces. Consistent with previous research, we obtained a shallower response time (RT) slope when the target face was angry than when it was happy. In Experiment 2, participants searched for a specific type of facial expression (allowing a top-down goal). When the display included a target, we found a shallower RT slope for the angry than for the happy face search. However, when an angry or happy face was present in the display in opposition to the task goal, we obtained equivalent RT slopes, suggesting that the mere presence of an angry face in opposition to the task goal did not support the well-known angry face superiority effect. Furthermore, RT distribution analyses supported the special status of an angry face only when it was combined with the top-down goal. On the basis of these results, we suggest that a threatening facial expression may guide attention as a high-priority stimulus in the absence of a specific goal; however, in the presence of a specific goal, the efficiency of facial expression search is dependent on the combined influence of a top-down goal and the stimulus characteristics.     

Attentional Bias for Threat: Evidence for Delayed Disengagement from Emotional Faces

The present paper reports three new experiments suggesting that the valence of a face cue can influence attentional effects in a cueing paradigm. Moreover, heightened trait anxiety resulted in increased attentional dwell-time on emotional facial stimuli, relative to neutral faces. Experiment 1 presented a cueing task, in which the cue was either an "angry", "happy", or "neutral" facial expression. Targets could appear either in the same location as the face (valid trials) or in a different location to the face (invalid trials). Participants did not show significant variations across the different cue types (angry, happy, neutral) in responding to a target on valid trials. However, the valence of the face did affect response times on invalid trials. Specifically, participants took longer to respond to a target when the face cue was "angry" or "happy" relative to neutral. In Experiment 2, the cue-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was increased and an overall inhibition of return (IOR) effect was found (i.e., slower responses on valid trials). However, the "angry" face cue eliminated the IOR effect for both high and low trait anxious groups. In Experiment 3, threat-related and jumbled facial stimuli reduced the magnitude of IOR for high, but not for low, trait-anxious participants.These results suggest that: (i) attentional bias in anxiety may reflect a difficulty in disengaging from threat-related and emotional stimuli, and (ii) threat-related and ambiguous cues can influence the magnitude of the IOR effect.     

Behold the wrath: Psychophysiological responses to facial stimuli

The complex musculature of the human face has been shaped by natural selection to produce gestures that communicate information about intentions and emotional states between senders and receivers. According to the preparedness hypothesis, different facial gestures are differentially prepared by evolution to become associated with different outcomes. As attested by psychophysiological responses in Pavlovian conditioning experiments, expressions of anger and fear more easily become signals for aversive stimuli than do expression of happiness. Consistent with the evolutionary perspective, the superior conditioning to angry faces is stronger for male than for female faces, for adult than for child faces, and for faces directed toward the receiver rather than directed away. Furthermore, it appears to be primarily located in the right cerebral hemisphere. The enhanced autonomic activity to angry faces signaling electric shock is not mediated by conscious cognitive activity, but is evident also when recognition of the facial stimulus is blocked by backward masking procedures. Similarly, conditioned responses can be established to masked angry, but not to masked happy faces. Electromyographic measurement of facial muscle activity reveals a tendency for emotional facial expression to rapidly and automatically elicit its mirror image in the face of the receiver, typically accompanied by the appropriate emotional experience. The research reviewed in this paper supports the proposition that humans have been evolutionarily tuned to respond automatically to facial stimuli, and it is suggested that such early automatic reactions shape the subsequent conscious emotional processing of the stimulus.The responsibility for this paper is shared equally between the authors. The research reviewed in the paper has been supported by separate grants to both authors from the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences, The Swedish Council for the Coordination and Planning of Research, and the Bank of Sweden Tercentennial Fund.     

Tone‐affect compatibility with affective stimuli and affective responses

Three experiments examine multimodal integration of tone pitch (high/low), facial expression stimuli (happy/angry), and responses (happy/angry) in a compatibility paradigm. When the participants' task is to imitate facial expressions (Experiment 1), smiles are facilitated by high tones whereas frowns are facilitated by low tones. Experiments 2 and 3 further analyse this effect and show that there is both integration between the tone stimulus and the facial stimulus and between the tone stimulus and the facial response. Results suggest that pitch height is associated with emotion. An interpretation in terms of an embodied cognition approach that emphasizes an interweavement of perception and action is discussed.     

The implicit cognition of reciprocal exchange: automatic retrieval of positive and negative experiences with partners in a prisoner's dilemma game

Models of reciprocity imply that cheater detection is an important prerequisite for successful social exchange. Considering the fundamental role of memory in reciprocal exchange, these theories lead to the prediction that memory for cheaters should be preferentially enhanced. Here, we examine whether information of a partner's previous behaviour in an interaction is automatically retrieved when encountering the face of a partner who previously cheated or cooperated. In two studies, participants played a sequential prisoner's dilemma game with cheaters and cooperative partners. Alternating with the game blocks, participants were asked to classify the smiling or angry facial expressions of cooperators and cheaters. Both experiments revealed congruence effects, reflecting faster identification of the smiles of cooperators (Experiments 1 and 2) and faster identification of the angry facial expressions of cheaters (Experiment 2). Our study provides evidence for the automatic retrieval of the partner's behaviour in the game, regardless of whether partners cheated or cooperated, and thus provides further evidence against the cheater detection hypothesis.     

An electromyographic investigation of the impact of task relevance on facial mimicry

When viewing a face expressing emotion, the viewer's face mimics the same emotion. It is unknown whether such facial mimicry takes place when the viewed emotion is a task irrelevant property of the face. The present experiment addressed this question by asking participants to judge either the emotional expression or the colour of a series of happy and angry faces that were either blue or yellow. Electromyographical recordings showed that when emotion was ignored, there was a tendency for facial muscle activity to be suppressed. Nonetheless, participants’ facial expressions mimicked target expressions, with the zygomaticus cheek muscle being more active when viewing a smiling face and the corrugator brow muscle more active when viewing an angry face. These data support the automatic encoding of irrelevant emotional information, as well as suppression of emotional information by selective attention.     

Affect of the unconscious: Visually suppressed angry faces modulate our decisions

Emotional and affective processing imposes itself over cognitive processes and modulates our perception of the surrounding environment. In two experiments, we addressed the issue of whether nonconscious processing of affect can take place even under deep states of unawareness, such as those induced by interocular suppression techniques, and can elicit an affective response that can influence our understanding of the surrounding environment. In Experiment 1, participants judged the likeability of an unfamiliar item—a Chinese character—that was preceded by a face expressing a particular emotion (either happy or angry). The face was rendered invisible through an interocular suppression technique (continuous flash suppression; CFS). In Experiment 2, backward masking (BM), a less robust masking technique, was used to render the facial expressions invisible. We found that despite equivalent phenomenological suppression of the visual primes under CFS and BM, different patterns of affective processing were obtained with the two masking techniques. Under BM, nonconscious affective priming was obtained for both happy and angry invisible facial expressions. However, under CFS, nonconscious affective priming was obtained only for angry facial expressions. We discuss an interpretation of this dissociation between affective processing and visual masking techniques in terms of distinct routes from the retina to the amygdala.     

The relativity of time perception produced by facial emotion stimuli

We systematically examined the impact of emotional stimuli on time perception in a temporal reproduction paradigm where participants reproduced the duration of a facial emotion stimulus using an oval-shape stimulus or vice versa. Experiment 1 asked participants to reproduce the duration of an angry face (or the oval) presented for 2,000 ms. Experiment 2 included a range of emotional expressions (happy, sad, angry, and neutral faces as well as the oval stimulus) presented for different durations (500, 1,500, and 2,000 ms). We found that participants over-reproduced the durations of happy and sad faces using the oval stimulus. By contrast, there was a trend of under-reproduction when the duration of the oval stimulus was reproduced using the angry face. We suggest that increased attention to a facial emotion produces the relativity of time perception.     

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.     

Flies on the wall are less aggressive: Self-distancing “in the heat of the moment” reduces aggressive thoughts,angry feelings and aggressive behavior

People tend to ruminate after being provoked, which is like using gasoline to put out a fire—it feeds the flame by keeping aggressive thoughts and angry feelings active. In contrast, reflecting over past provocations from a self-distanced or “fly on the wall” perspective reduces aggressive thoughts and angry feelings. However, it is unclear whether people can self-distance “in the heat of the moment” (i.e., immediately after being provoked), and if they can, whether doing so reduces actual aggressive behavior. Two experiments addressed these issues. The results indicated that provoked participants who self-distanced had fewer aggressive thoughts and angry feelings (Experiment 1) and displayed less aggressive behavior (Experiment 2) than participants who self-immersed or were in a control group. These findings demonstrate that people can self-distance in the heat of the moment, and that doing so reduces aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, and aggressive behavior.     

Effect on retaliation of causal attributions concerning attack

In two studies, men were defeated on either 17%, 50%, or 83% of reaction time trials, received aversive noise, and could ostensibly retaliate by delivering shock to their partner. The noise level delivered was described in Experiment 1 as typical of most other people (high consensus) or atypical of most other people (low consensus) and in Experiment 2 as from a partner who knew (high foreseeability) or did not know (low foreseeability) the kind and level of stimulation controlled by the switches delivering reinforcement to the recipient. Hypotheses were based on the notion that retaliation increases as more personal causality is attributed to a provoker and that more personal causality is inferred in highly foreseeable--or low consensus--50% defeat conditions. As expected, greater differences in aggression between high and low consensus and between high and low foreseeability were displayed in the 50% defeat condition than in the other defeat conditions. Anticipated differences in inferences were obtained.     

Rapid facial reactions to emotional facial expressions in typically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorder

Typical adults mimic facial expressions within 1000 ms, but adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) do not. These rapid facial reactions (RFRs) are associated with the development of social-emotional abilities. Such interpersonal matching may be caused by motor mirroring or emotional responses. Using facial electromyography (EMG), this study evaluated mechanisms underlying RFRs during childhood and examined possible impairment in children with ASD. Experiment 1 found RFRs to happy and angry faces (not fear faces) in 15 typically developing children from 7 to 12 years of age. RFRs of fear (not anger) in response to angry faces indicated an emotional mechanism. In 11 children (8-13 years of age) with ASD, Experiment 2 found undifferentiated RFRs to fear expressions and no consistent RFRs to happy or angry faces. However, as children with ASD aged, matching RFRs to happy faces increased significantly, suggesting the development of processes underlying matching RFRs during this period in ASD.     

内隐/外显不同水平攻击者的注意偏向：行为和ERP证据

通过行为实验（点探测）和ERP实验（情绪Stroop）两个实验任务,考察了内隐/外显不同水平攻击者的注意偏向及其脑机制。结果表明：高外显攻击者对愤怒面孔存在注意偏向;高外显攻击者在愤怒面孔上的N100波幅显著低于中性面孔,表明其注意分配和调节能力较弱;高外显攻击者较之低外显攻击者的P300波幅更小表明其存在注意等方面的认知加工缺陷,N400波幅更小表明其对愤怒面孔进行语义编码时加工更为流畅;外显攻击组与内隐攻击组在FCz和Cz电极点上不同。这为内隐/外显攻击二者有着独立结构提供了行为与认知神经科学的证据。     

Social categorization and the perception of facial affect: target race moderates the response latency advantage for happy faces

Two experiments competitively test 3 potential mechanisms (negativity inhibiting responses, feature-based accounts, and evaluative context) for the response latency advantage for recognizing happy expressions by investigating how the race of a target can moderate the strength of the effect. Both experiments indicate that target race modulates the happy face advantage, such that European American participants displayed the happy face advantage for White target faces, but displayed a response latency advantage for angry (Experiments 1 and 2) and sad (Experiment 2) Black target faces. This pattern of findings is consistent with an evaluative context mechanism and inconsistent with negativity inhibition and feature-based accounts of the happy face advantage. Thus, the race of a target face provides an evaluative context in which facial expressions are categorized.     

Dismissing-avoidant pattern of attachment and mimicry reactions at different levels of information processing

Individuals with a dismissing-avoidant pattern of attachment are assumed to repress anxiety-related signals, a disposition hypothesized to interfere with facial mimicry and emotional contagion. Further, they are assumed to have one internal working model associated with anxiety, operating out of awareness at early, automatic stages of information processing, and another positive model operating at later, cognitively controlled stages of processing. The main aim of the present investigation was to compare facial mimicry in dismissing-avoidant and non-dismissing subjects at different levels of information processing. Pictures of happy and angry faces were exposed to 61 subjects at three different exposure times (17, 56, and 2,350 ms) in order to elicit facial muscle reactions, first at automatic levels and then at a more controlled levels. Corrugator activity ("frowning muscles") represented negative emotions and zygomaticus activity ("smiling muscles") positive emotions. The dismissing-avoidant subjects scored significantly lower on emotional empathy than the non-dismissing subjects. At the automatic level the dismissing-avoidant subjects showed "normal" corrugator responses (negative emotions) upon exposure to angry faces. At the cognitively controlled level of processing (2,350 ms) a significant interaction effect was shown between Faces x Muscles x Attachment pattern. The dismissing-avoidant subjects showed no corrugator response and an increased zygomaticus response ("smiling reaction") to the angry face, whereas the non-dismissing subjects reacted with a significant mimicking reaction. The dismissing-avoidant subjects' tendency to "smiling" in response to the angry face at the controlled level (2,350 ms) may be interpreted as a repression of their earlier, automatically evoked (56 ms) negative emotional reaction.     

个体攻击性对愤怒表情类别知觉的影响

探讨了个体攻击性对愤怒表情加工中反应偏向和敏感性的影响。使用愤怒、恐惧原型生成表情连续体作为实验材料, 采用类别知觉实验范式考察了高、低攻击个体识别和辨别愤怒-恐惧连续体的类别转折点和斜率。结果发现, 与低攻击个体相比, 高攻击个体识别愤怒-恐惧连续体类别界线处的曲线斜率更大; 高攻击个体具有类别界线向恐惧一端偏移的倾向, 但并没有达到统计显著。这表明, 高攻击个体不存在敌意归因偏向, 而是对愤怒和恐惧表情的转变具有更高的敏感性。     

拥挤感启动对威胁性表情识别知觉敏感性的影响

为了考察拥挤感启动对威胁性面部表情识别的影响,以28名大学生为被试,进行不同拥挤启动条件下的愤怒-中性和恐惧-中性表情识别任务。信号检测论分析发现,拥挤感启动降低了愤怒表情识别的辨别力,不影响其判断标准,也不影响恐惧表情识别的辨别力和判断标准;主观报告的愤怒表情强度在拥挤感启动条件下显著高于非拥挤条件,恐惧、中性表情强度则不受拥挤感启动的影响。结果表明,拥挤感启动使人们辨别愤怒表情的知觉敏感性下降。     

Automatic integration of non-perceptual action effect features: the case of the associative affective Simon effect

In the first phase of Experiment 1, participants were instructed to move a response key up or down in response to a go signal. One of both responses was consistently followed by an aversive stimulus, whereas the other response was never followed by the aversive stimulus. In a subsequent test phase, the same responses had to be emitted according to the grammatical category (noun or adjective) of positive and negative target words. Results showed that the level of affective correspondence between the task-irrelevant positive or negative connotation of the target and the motivational significance of the effect of the correct response influenced performance. The results of Experiment 2 replicated those of Experiment 1, using alternating target-response assignment. These findings point to the integration of affective action effect feature codes in the cognitive representation of actions.