Looking for Foes and Friends: Perceptual and Emotional Factors When Finding a Face in the Crowd.

Abstract

In a face-in-the-crowd setting, the authors examined visual search for photographically reproduced happy, angry, and fearful target faces among neutral distractor faces in 3 separate experiments. Contrary to the hypothesis, happy targets were consistently detected more quickly and accurately than angry and fearful targets, as were directed compared with averted targets. There was no consistent effect of social anxiety. A facial emotion recognition experiment suggested that the happy search advantage could be due to the ease of processing happy faces. In the final experiment with perceptually controlled schematic faces, the authors reported more effective detection of angry than happy faces. This angry advantage was most obvious for highly socially anxious individuals when their social fear was experimentally enhanced.

Negative emotional photographs are identified more slowly than positive photographs

“…For instance, participants take longer to count the number of facial features in displays of negative than of positive schematic faces (Eastwood, Smilek, & Merikle, 2003), to respond to the gender of negative than of positive faces (Purcell, Stewart, & Skov, 1998), or to respond to the color of a negative than of a positive face (White, 1996). The findings are also broadly consistent with a number of studies that have found people to be faster and more accurate at identifying happy faces than negative (fearful, angry, sad, or disgusted) faces (Juth et al, 2005;Kirita & Endo, 1995;Leppänen & Hietanen, 2004;Palermo & Coltheart, 2004). For instance, concluded that happy faces were identified more rapidly and required less effort to encode than negative faces.…”

“…To do so, we had to avoid the most negative images from the IAPS since they tend to be more highly arousing than the positive images. We also attempted to avoid pictures displaying close-ups of people's faces since there is evidence for a processing advantage for happy faces (Amir, Elias, Klumpp, & Przeworski, 2003;Juth, Lundqvist, Karlsson, & Öhman, 2005;Kirita & Endo, 1995;Leppänen & Hietanen, 2004). Within these constraints, we wanted to maximize the valence difference between our stimuli.…”

Exploring the function of selective attention and hypervigilance for threat in anxiety

“…snakes and spiders) is enhanced in individuals reporting high levels of fear or phobia for specific stimuli (Flykt & Caldara, 2006;Öhman, Flykt, & Esteves, 2001;Rinck et al, 2005;Soares, Esteves, Lundqvist, & Öhman, 2009). There is also evidence to suggest that social anxiety and trait anxiety are associated with greater speed and accuracy in searching for and detecting the presence of angry target faces (Gilboa-Schechtman, Foa, & A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P T Running Head: ANXIETY, SELECTIVE ATTENTION AND HYPERVIGILANCE Amir, 1999;Byrne & Eysenck, 1995;Juth, Lundqvist, Karlsson, & Öhman, 2005). Further studies have varied set size in order to assess the effect of anxiety on search efficiency as indexed by the gradient and intercept of the search slope (Eastwood et al, 2005;Matsumoto, 2010).…”

Visual search for basic emotional expressions in autism; impaired processing of anger, fear and sadness, but a typical happy face advantage

“…perceptual comparisons across faces (Frischen, Eastwood & Smilek, 2008;Horstman, 2009;Juth et al, 2005). For example, the happy face advantage seems to involve an interplay between emotional and perceptual factors.…”