According to the facial feedback hypothesis, people's affective responses can be influenced by their own facial expression (e.g., smiling, pouting), even when their expression did not result from their emotional experiences. For example, Strack, Martin, and Stepper (1988) instructed participants to rate the funniness of cartoons using a pen that they held in their mouth. In line with the facial feedback hypothesis, when participants held the pen with their teeth (inducing a "smile"), they rated the cartoons as funnier than when they held the pen with their lips (inducing a "pout"). This seminal study of the facial feedback hypothesis has not been replicated directly. This Registered Replication Report describes the results of 17 independent direct replications of Study 1 from Strack et al. (1988), all of which followed the same vetted protocol. A meta-analysis of these studies examined the difference in funniness ratings between the "smile" and "pout" conditions. The original Strack et al. (1988) study reported a rating difference of 0.82 units on a 10-point Likert scale. Our meta-analysis revealed a rating difference of 0.03 units with a 95% confidence interval ranging from -0.11 to 0.16.

Anxiety modulates the functioning of attention. Although the existence of this relationship is clear, its nature is still poorly defined. Added are the facts that different types of anxiety--state or trait--may influence attention differently and that attention is not a unitary system. We studied the influence of such types of anxiety by means of a task that, using emotionally neutral information, assesses the efficiency of three attentional networks: orienting, alerting, and executive control. Results showed a double dissociation. Trait anxiety was related to deficiencies in the executive control network, but state anxiety was associated with an overfunctioning of the alerting and orienting networks.

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Research shows that attention is ineluctably captured away from a focal visual task by rare and unexpected changes (deviants) in an otherwise repeated stream of task-irrelevant auditory distractors (standards). The fundamental cognitive mechanisms underlying this effect have been the object of an increasing number of studies but their sensitivity to mood and emotions remains relatively unexplored despite suggestion of greater distractibility in negative emotional contexts. In this study, we examined the effect of sadness, a widespread form of emotional distress and a symptom of many disorders, on distraction by deviant sounds. Participants received either a sadness induction or a neutral mood induction by means of a mixed procedure based on music and autobiographical recall prior to taking part in an auditory-visual oddball task in which they categorized visual digits while ignoring task-irrelevant sounds. The results showed that although all participants exhibited significantly longer response times in the visual categorization task following the presentation of rare and unexpected deviant sounds relative to that of the standard sound, this distraction effect was significantly greater in participants who had received the sadness induction (a twofold increase). The residual distraction on the subsequent trial (postdeviance distraction) was equivalent in both groups, suggesting that sadness interfered with the disengagement of attention from the deviant sound and back toward the target stimulus. We propose that this disengagement impairment reflected the monopolization of cognitive resources by sadness and/or associated ruminations. Our findings suggest that sadness can increase distraction even when distractors are emotionally neutral.

Traditionally, anxiety has been associated with a selective attentional bias for threat and a decreased capacity in attentional control. In two different experiments, we investigated whether individuals with different levels of self-reported state anxiety (Experiment 1) and induced anxiety (Experiment 2) had impaired response inhibition processes (attentional control deficit) as characterized by a different response style in the presence of negative stimuli under low and high perceptual load conditions. A go/no-go paradigm with emotional distractors (angry, happy, and neutral faces) was used to provide measures of perceptual sensitivity, inhibition, and response style. Our findings showed that perceptual sensitivity, as assessed by the d' parameter of signal detection theory, was reduced in all participants for angry faces under low perceptual load, where enough perceptual resources were available to be attracted by distractors. Importantly, despite similar perceptual sensitivity, the beta parameter indicated that high state anxiety individuals in both experiments were less flexible at adjusting to task demands in the presence of angry face distractors by adopting a stricter criterion. Implications of findings are discussed within current models of attentional control in anxiety.