Identifying facial emotions: Valence specific effects and an exploration of the effects of viewer gender

Abstract

The valence hypothesis suggests that the right hemisphere is specialised for negative emotions and the left hemisphere is specialised for positive emotions (Silberman & Weingartner, 1986). It is unclear to what extent valence-specific effects in facial emotion perception depend upon the gender of the perceiver. To explore this question 46 participants completed a free view lateralised emotion perception task which involved judging which of two faces expressed a particular emotion. Eye fixations of 24 of the participants were recorded using an eye tracker. A significant valencespecific laterality effect was obtained, with positive emotions more accurately identified when presented to the right of centre, and negative emotions more accurately identified when presented to the left of centre. The valence-specific laterality effect did not depend on the gender of the perceiver. Analysis of the eye tracking data showed that males made more fixations while recognising the emotions and that the left-eye was fixated substantially more than the right-eye during emotion perception. Finally, in a control condition where both faces were identical, but expressed a faint emotion, the participants were significantly more likely to select the right side when the emotion label was positive. This finding adds to evidence suggesting that valence effects in facial emotion perception are not only caused by the perception of the emotion but by other processes.

A leftward bias however you look at it: Revisiting the emotional chimeric face task as a tool for measuring emotion lateralization

“…Borod et al, 1998) rather than differentially lateralized depending on valence (e.g. Adolphs, Jansari, & Tranel, 2001;Ahern & Schwartz, 1985;Jansari, Rodway, & Goncalves, 2011). The leftward ECFT biases were not significantly affected by a left visual field bias in visuospatial attention, as measured by the Greyscales task (Mattingley et al, 1994;Nicholls, et al, 1999;Nicholls & Roberts, 2002).…”

“…However, the overall left bias in ECFT indicated by the intercept was still significant, F(1, 56) = 12.11, p = .001, η p 2 = .18, albeit reduced in effect size. However, the between-subjects effect of the Greyscales LQ covariate data was not To test the hypothesis that the EFCT bias was only affected in participants with a clear attention bias, the sample was divided in two groups based on a median split of the Greyscale LQ (cut-off score = 0.27), one with a small, non-significant (-0.1 ± .04), t (27) …”

“…However, some research has led to alternative, and currently debated models (Abbott, Cumming, Fidler, & Lindell, 2013;Killgore & Yurgelun-Todd, 2007), describing the laterality of emotional processing: the Valence-Specific Hypothesis, that positive expressions (i.e. happiness, and by some accounts surprise) are preferentially left hemisphere processed, with negative emotions showing a right hemisphere bias (Adolphs, Jansari, & Tranel, 2001;Ahern & Schwartz, 1985;Jansari, Rodway, & Goncalves, 2011), and the associated approach-withdrawal related model in which approach emotions (anger, happiness, surprise) are left hemisphere dominant and withdrawal-related emotion (disgust, fear, and sadness) are right hemisphere dominant. The key variation between the latter two is the lateralization of anger (Harmon-Jones, 2004).…”

A review on sex differences in processing emotional signals

“…In a group of 37 students, looking patterns of male and female participants on angry, fearful and happy facial expressions were similar. Even when including a high and low socially anxious group and increasing the sample to 79 individuals did not reveal any difference between the sexes (Kret, Roelofs, Stekelenburg, & De Gelder, in preparation) (see also Jansari, Rodway, & Goncalves, 2011). In another study showing the emotional expressions for a short duration -less than 200 ms -looking patterns were the same for both genders, yet women showed higher accuracy rates than men (Hall & Matsumoto, 2004).…”

Models of hemispheric specialization in facial emotion perception—a reevaluation.

“…There are three studies that found a valencespecific laterality effect with a LVF advantage for negative emotions and a RVF advantage for positive emotion corresponding to the right and left hemisphere, respectively (Jansari et al, 2011;Rodway et al, 2003;Stafford & Brandaro, 2010). These three studies used facial expressions of the six basic emotions, presented simultaneously in the left and right VHF with an emotion label presented centrally and above the faces.…”