Memory and attention for social threat: anxious hypercoding-avoidance and submissive gaze aversion

Rivalry for dominance is a recurrent challenge in human social interaction. During these social dominance interactions, some people rapidly break eye contact, whereas others merely try to avoid such eye-to-eye confrontations. The first is an example of submissive gaze aversion, whereas the second reflects anxious gaze avoidance. We tested these distinct forms of gaze behavior within a social-memory setting and show that anxious individuals vigilantly attend to, superiorly remember, and subsequently avoid social threats (i.e., angry faces). Furthermore, submissive individuals, as indexed by high trait anxiety and low trait anger, exhibit rapid gaze aversion from facial anger. Mechanisms of hypervigilance-avoidance thus seem to underlie natural gaze behavior and enhanced memory for threat in anxiety. Accordingly, we propose the term hypercoding-avoidance, which describes how anxious individuals habitually scan their immediate social environment for threat, remember its location, and subsequently avoid it. Moreover, this is the first experimental evidence showing that submissive gaze aversion is distinct from anxious gaze avoidance.     

Differentially tuned responses to restricted versus prolonged awareness of threat: a preliminary fMRI investigation

Responses to threat occur via two known independent processing routes. We propose that early, reflexive processing is predominantly tuned to the detection of congruent combinations of facial cues that signal threat, whereas later, reflective processing is predominantly tuned to incongruent combinations of threat. To test this prediction, we examined responses to threat-gaze expression pairs (anger versus fear expression by direct versus averted gaze). We report on two functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, one employing prolonged presentations (2 s) of threat-gaze pairs to allow for reflective processing (Study 1), and one employing severely restricted (33 ms), backward masked presentations of threat-gaze pairs to isolate reflexive neural responding (Study 2). Our findings offer initial support for the conclusion that early, reflexive responses to threat are predominantly tuned to congruent threat-gaze pairings, whereas later reflective responses are predominantly tuned to ambiguous threat-gaze pairings. These findings highlight a distinct dual function in threat perception.     

Behavioural responses to facial and postural expressions of emotion: An interpersonal circumplex approach

While the recognition of emotional expressions has been extensively studied, the behavioural response to these expressions has not. In the interpersonal circumplex, behaviour is defined in terms of communion and agency. In this study, we examined behavioural responses to both facial and postural expressions of emotion. We presented 101 Romanian students with facial and postural stimuli involving individuals (‘targets’) expressing happiness, sadness, anger, or fear. Using an interpersonal grid, participants simultaneously indicated how communal (i.e., quarrelsome or agreeable) and agentic (i.e., dominant or submissive) they would be towards people displaying these expressions. Participants were agreeable‐dominant towards targets showing happy facial expressions and primarily quarrelsome towards targets with angry or fearful facial expressions. Responses to targets showing sad facial expressions were neutral on both dimensions of interpersonal behaviour. Postural versus facial expressions of happiness and anger elicited similar behavioural responses. Participants responded in a quarrelsome‐submissive way to fearful postural expressions and in an agreeable way to sad postural expressions. Behavioural responses to the various facial expressions were largely comparable to those previously observed in Dutch students. Observed differences may be explained from participants’ cultural background. Responses to the postural expressions largely matched responses to the facial expressions.     

Gaze avoidance: Personality and social judgments of people who avoid direct face-to-face contact

Some people maintain direct, face-to-face contact during interaction, whereas others avert their gaze or turn their face while interacting. Research on individual differences in gaze avoidance, while sparse, falls into two areas. One concerns the personality and psychopathology correlates of gaze aversion, and the other concerns social judgments made of people who avert their gaze during interaction. The findings generally show that gaze aversion is associated with unfavorable traits (shyness, social anxiety, risk for schizophrenia) and negative social evaluations (gaze averse people are rated as more deceptive and less sincere). The present study took advantage of an archival data set that contained facial photographs from which gaze avoidance could be scored. The correlates of gaze avoidance were different for men and women. Gaze avoidant men tended to be emotionally inhibited and overcontrolled, and reported a high incidence of various psychosomatic and physical symptoms. Gaze avoidant women, on the other hand, were high on measures of psychopathy, hysteria, and traditional femininity, they tended to have fewer physical symptoms. Gaze avoidant women were also viewed by others in a negative light (as being disagreeable, unconscientious, unattractive, and even somewhat lower on intelligence). In males, none of the social judgment variables correlated significantly with gaze avoidance. Results are discussed in terms of sex differences in the meaning and communicative function of this non-verbal social behavior.     

Rapid reactions to direct and averted facial expressions of fear and anger

Recent studies have shown that reaction times to expressions of anger with averted gaze and fear with direct gaze appear slower than those to direct anger and averted fear. Such findings have been explained by appealing to the notion of gaze/expression congruence with aversion (avoidance) associated with fear, whereas directness (approach) is associated with anger. The current study examined reactions to briefly presented direct and averted faces displaying expressions of fear and anger. Participants were shown four blocked series of faces; each block contained an equal mix of two facial expressions (neutral plus either fear or anger) presented at one viewpoint (either full face or three quarter leftward facing). Participants were instructed to make rapid responses classifying the expressions as either neutral or expressive. Initial analysis of reaction time distributions showed differences in distribution shape with reactions to averted anger and direct fear showing greater skew than those to direct anger and averted fear. Computational modelling, using a diffusion model of decision making and reaction time, showed a difference in the rate of information accrual with more rapid rates of accrual when viewpoint and expression were congruent. This analysis supports the notion of signal congruence as a mechanism through which gaze and viewpoint affect our responses to facial expressions.     

Cardiovascular and testosterone responses to contested dominance in women

Examined cardiovascular and testosterone responses of dominant and submissive women to an acute stressor involving contested dominance. Twenty (10 dominant, 10 submissive) university students rated their dominance to a predefined reference group, participated in a task that involved debating with a trained technician, and were continuously provided with bogus feedback throughout the task concerning biochemical substances in their blood that purportedly covaried with dominance. Covariance analyses revealed that dominant women were much more reactive to the stressor in several cardiovascular parameters than those classified as submissive. Serum testosterone did not vary as a function of the experimental manipulation, and at each measurement point, dominant and submissive subjects had essentially identical serum levels of this hormone. Interestingly, however, baseline testosterone for the dominant group was related to changes in systolic blood pressure (i.e., gain scores computed as task response minus baseline values).     

Power moves: complementarity in dominant and submissive nonverbal behavior

Two studies examine complementarity (vs. mimicry) of dominant and submissive nonverbal behaviors. In the first study, participants interacted with a confederate who displayed either dominance (through postural expansion) or submission (through postural constriction). On average, participants exposed to a dominant confederate decreased their postural stance, whereas participants exposed to a submissive confederate increased their stance. Further, participants with complementing responses (dominance in response to submission and submission in response to dominance) liked their partner more and were more comfortable than those who mimicked. In the second study, complementarity and mimicry were manipulated, and complementarity resulted in more liking and comfort than mimicry. The findings speak to the likelihood of hierarchical differentiation.     

Is chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) spatial attention reflexively triggered by gaze cue?

Humans show a reflexive shift in spatial attention triggered by gaze cues. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) have an excellent ability to follow another's gaze, but they exhibit a limited capacity to engage in triadic interactions based on joint attention, suggesting the possibility of contributions of the different mechanisms underlying joint attention between humans and chimpanzees. The present study thus examined how the chimpanzee's visual spatial attention is triggered by gaze cues. Two chimpanzees showed no clear signs of attention shift triggered by various kinds of nonfacial and facial stimuli with averted gaze under the letter-discrimination tasks but showed significant cueing effects when the head-turning cue was presented in a quasi-dynamic manner. These cueing effects were, however, affected by the predictability of the gaze cue: Highly predictive gaze cues caused stronger cueing effects than less predictive cues. Thus, these results suggest that the shift in spatial attention caused by gaze cues does occur in chimpanzees, but, in contrast to humans, vulnerability against the cue predictability suggests that the voluntary mechanism contributes more dominantly than the reflexive mechanism to this attention shift.     

Facilitating sexual arousal via anger,aggression, or dominance

The hypothesis that either an angry emotional state or the expression of aggressive behavior facilitates sexual arousal has been the subject of considerable speculation but relatively little research. In a series of studies, Barclay found that anger increased sexual arousal as measured by the amount of sexual imagery produced in response to TAT-like stimuli that depicted males and females in dominant and submissive roles. In the present research, a series of experiments was conducted to determine whether such facilitation can be generalized beyond the specific procedures used by Barclay. Subjects (151 males and 136 females) in three experiments were angered by being negatively evaluated by a confederate identified as a fellow subject. Some subjects were subsequently given an opportunity to aggress; additionally, some subjects were exposed to male- and female-dominant pictorial stimuli. Results indicated that neither anger instigation nor the opportunity to engage in aggressive acts influenced self-reported sexual arousal. There was consistent evidence, however, that portrayals of dominance influenced perceptions of the stimulus person's sexuality. Though anger and aggression do not seem to facilitate sexual arousal, dominance cues (which can be confounded with anger manipulation) clearly elicit perceptions of sexuality.     

Attention-getting vs. imitation effects on depressed mother-infant interactions

The effects of instructing mothers to “imitate” their infant versus “keep their infant's atten tion” were examined during mother-infant face-to-face interactions of 18 mothers reporting depressive symptoms as compared with 22 mothers who did not report such symptoms. Mothers were generally rated as showing more positive facial expressions and more game playing (particularly the depressed mothers) during the attention-getting versus the imitation sessions. The infants received more optimal physical ac tivity, and facial expression ratings during attention getting, and the infants of depressed mothers, in par ticular, showed more positive facial expressivity and more joy expressions. As might be expected for the imitation condition, mothers showed more imitative behavior, contingent responsivity, and silence during gaze aversion. Infants generally showed more disinterest and self-comfort behaviors, and the infants of depressed mothers, in particular, showed more anger expressions, fussiness, and squirming during the imitation condition. The data suggest that the attention-getting condition was the most effective “intervention” for eliciting positive behavior in the depressed mother-infant dyads.     

Facial appearance, gender, and emotion expression

Western gender stereotypes describe women as affiliative and more likely to show happiness and men as dominant and more likely to show anger. The authors assessed the hypothesis that the gender-stereotypic effects on perceptions of anger and happiness are partially mediated by facial appearance markers of dominance and affiliation by equating men's and women's faces for these cues. In 2 studies, women were rated as more angry and men as more happy-a reversal of the stereotype. Ratings of sadness, however, were not systematically affected. It is posited that markers of affiliation and dominance, themselves confounded with gender, interact with the expressive cues for anger and happiness to produce emotional perceptions that have been viewed as simple gender stereotypes.     

Can implicit appraisal concepts produce emotion-specific effects? A focus on unfairness and anger

This research examined whether the non-conscious activation of an implicit appraisal concept could affect responses associated with the corresponding emotion as predicted by appraisal theories. Explicit and implicit emotional responses were examined. We focused on implicit unfairness and its effect on anger. The results show that subliminal activation of implicit unfairness affected implicit anger responses (anger facial expression and latency responses to anger words) but not explicit anger feelings (i.e., reported anger). The non-conscious effect of implicit unfairness was specific to anger, as no effect on sadness, fear, and guilt was found.     

Affect in the eyes: explicit and implicit evaluations

The present study investigated whether another individual’s gaze direction influences an observer’s affective responses. In Experiment 1, subjective self-ratings and an affective priming paradigm were employed to examine how participants explicitly and implicitly, respectively, evaluated the affective valence of direct gaze, averted gaze, and closed eyes. The explicit self-ratings showed that participants evaluated closed eyes more positively than direct gaze. However, the implicit priming task showed an inverse pattern of results indicating that direct gaze was automatically evaluated more positively than closed eyes were. Experiment 2 confirmed that the opposite patterns of results between the two tasks were not due to differences in presentation times of the gaze stimuli. The results provide evidence for automatic affective reactions to eye gaze and indicate a dissociation between explicit and implicit affective evaluations of eyes and gaze direction.     

Responding to the direction of the eyes: In search of the masked gaze-cueing effect

Recent studies have demonstrated that masked gaze cues can produce a cueing effect. Those studies, however, all utilized a localization task and, hence, are ambiguous with respect to whether the previously observed masked gaze-cueing effect reflects the orienting of attention or the preparation of a motor response. The aim of the present study was to investigate this issue by determining whether masked gaze cues can modulate responses in detection and discrimination tasks, both of which isolate spatial attention from response priming. First, we found a gaze-cueing effect for unmasked cues in detection, discrimination, and localization tasks, which suggests that the gaze-cueing effect for visible cues is not task dependent. Second, and in contrast, we found a gaze-cueing effect for masked cues in a localization task, but not in detection or discrimination tasks, which suggests that the gaze-cueing effect for masked cues is task dependent. Therefore, the present study shows that the masked gaze-cueing effect is attributed to response priming, as opposed to the orienting of spatial attention.     

Communal and agentic behaviour in response to facial emotion expressions

Facial emotions are important for human communication. Unfortunately, traditional facial emotion recognition tasks do not inform about how respondents might behave towards others expressing certain emotions. Approach‐avoidance tasks do measure behaviour, but only on one dimension. In this study 81 participants completed a novel Facial Emotion Response Task. Images displaying individuals with emotional expressions were presented in random order. Participants simultaneously indicated how communal (quarrelsome vs. agreeable) and how agentic (dominant vs. submissive) they would be in response to each expression. We found that participants responded differently to happy, angry, fearful, and sad expressions in terms of both dimensions of behaviour. Higher levels of negative affect were associated with less agreeable responses specifically towards happy and sad expressions. The Facial Emotion Response Task might complement existing facial emotion recognition and approach‐avoidance tasks.     

Right hemispheric dominance in gaze-triggered reflexive shift of attention in humans

Recent findings suggest a right hemispheric dominance in gaze-triggered shifts of attention. The aim of this study was to clarify the dominant hemisphere in the gaze processing that mediates attentional shift. A target localization task, with preceding non-predicative gaze cues presented to each visual field, was undertaken by 44 healthy subjects, measuring reaction time (RT). A face identification task was also given to determine hemispheric dominance in face processing for each subject. RT differences between valid and invalid cues were larger when presented in the left rather than the right visual field. This held true regardless of individual hemispheric dominance in face processing. Together, these results indicate right hemispheric dominance in gaze-triggered reflexive shifts of attention in normal healthy subjects.     

Contextual influences on interpersonal complementarity

The influence of context on interpersonal complementarity was examined using an event-contingent recording procedure. Setting and role status moderated the relation between how a person behaved and how the other person behaved. Individuals were more likely to respond with agreeable behavior to agreeableness in others when not at work than when at work and when in a high status work role relative to a low status work role. Reciprocity between dominance and submissiveness was found in work settings but not in nonwork settings. Individuals were more likely to reciprocate more submissive behavior by the other person with more dominant behavior and more likely to reciprocate more dominant behavior by the other person with relatively more submissive behavior when in a higher status work role relative to lower status work roles. Results were interpreted in terms of the influence of decreased structure and shared goals on increasing interpersonal complementarity.     

The influence of gender,social roles,and facial appearance on perceived emotionality

One of the most pervasive gender stereotypes in Western culture concerns expectations regarding men's and women's emotionality. Whereas men are expected to be anger prone, women are expected to smile more. At the same time, men are generally perceived as more facially dominant and facially dominant individuals are expected to show more anger. That is, both facial appearance and social role expectations would lead observers to expect men to show more anger. The present research had the goal to disentangle the unique contribution of these two factors. As it is impossible in our society to fully untangle the influence of these factors since they are highly confounded, we created an alien society where these factors could be unconfounded. In this alien world, Deluvia, child rearing is exclusively assumed by a third gender, the caregiver, whereas men and women share the same social roles. The facial appearance of the Deluvians was varied along the dominance continuum. The results showed that facially dominant Deluvians, regardless of gender, were expected to show more anger, disgust, and contempt and less happiness, fear, sadness, and surprise. Also, the nurturing caregivers were expected to show less anger, contempt, and disgust as well as more fear, sadness, and surprise, regardless of facial appearance. No effect of gender per se on perceived emotionality was found. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A novel variation of the Stroop task reveals reflexive supremacy of peripheral over gaze stimuli in pro and anti saccades

A long-standing controversy in social attention debates whether gaze-of-another induces reflexive shifts of one’s own attention. In attempting to resolve this controversy, we utilized a novel Stroop task, the PAT Stroop, in which pro- and anti-saccade (PAT) responses are made to competing gaze and peripheral stimuli. The first experiment demonstrated a “Stroop effect” for peripheral stimuli, i.e. peripheral distractors interfered with gaze triggers, but gaze distractors did not interfere with peripheral triggers. These results were replicated in the second experiment, which also negated the possibility that the mere display and practice of the “clean PAT” influenced the results. Thus, the use a new PAT Stroop task demonstrated reflexive supremacy of peripheral stimuli over gaze stimuli. This novel variant of the Stroop task demonstrated similar characteristics to the classic color naming Stroop - i.e. an asymmetrical pattern, and again showed the utility and versatility of stoop-like tasks in probing mental tasks.     

Gender moderates the relationship between emotion and perceived gaze

Recent evidence shows that gender modulates the morphology of facial expressions and might thus alter the meaning of those expressions. Consequently, we hypothesized that gender would moderate the relationship between facial expressions and the perception of direct gaze. In Study 1, participants viewed male and female faces exhibiting joy, anger, fear, and neutral expressions displayed with direct and averted gazes. Perceptions of direct gaze were most likely for male faces expressing anger or joy and for female faces expressing joy. Study 2 established that these results were due to facial morphology and not to gender stereotypes. Thus, the morphology of male and female faces amplifies or constrains emotional signals and accordingly alters gaze perception.