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31-05-2023 | Research

Infrequent facial expressions of emotion do not bias attention

Auteurs: Joshua W. Maxwell, Danielle N. Sanchez, Eric Ruthruff

Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research | Uitgave 8/2023

Abstract

Despite the obvious importance of facial expressions of emotion, most studies have found that they do not bias attention. A critical limitation, however, is that these studies generally present face distractors on all trials of the experiment. For other kinds of emotional stimuli, such as emotional scenes, infrequently presented stimuli elicit greater attentional bias than frequently presented stimuli, perhaps due to suppression or habituation. The goal of the current study then was to test whether such modulation of attentional bias by distractor frequency generalizes to facial expressions of emotion. In Experiment 1, both angry and happy faces were unable to bias attention, despite being infrequently presented. Even when the location of these face cues were more unpredictable—presented in one of two possible locations—still no attentional bias was observed (Experiment 2). Moreover, there was no bottom-up influence for angry and happy faces shown under high or low perceptual load (Experiment 3). We conclude that task-irrelevant posed facial expressions of emotion cannot bias attention even when presented infrequently.

vorige artikel Foot cues can elicit covert orienting of attention

volgende artikel The effects of self-selected background music and task difficulty on task engagement and performance in a visual vigilance task

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Titel: Infrequent facial expressions of emotion do not bias attention
Auteurs: Joshua W. Maxwell
Danielle N. Sanchez
Eric Ruthruff
Publicatiedatum: 31-05-2023
Uitgeverij: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research / Uitgave 8/2023
Print ISSN: 0340-0727
Elektronisch ISSN: 1430-2772
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01844-6

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