Abstract
We conducted two studies (Ns=52 and 60) to test the notion that the incentive salience of facial expressions of emotion (FEE) is a joint function of perceivers’ implicit needs for power and affiliation and the FEE’s meaning as a dominance or affiliation signal. We used a variant of the dot-probe task (Mogg & Bradley, 1999a) to measure attentional orienting. Joy, anger, surprise, and neutral FEEs were presented for 12, 116, and 231 ms with backward masking. Implicit motives were assessed with a Picture Story Exercise. We found that power-motivated individuals orient their attention towards faces signaling low dominance, but away from faces that signal high dominance, and (b) that affiliation-motivated individuals show vigilance for faces signaling low affiliation (rejection) and, to a lesser extent, orient attention towards faces signaling high affiliation (acceptance).
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies Faculty Grant and NSF grant BCS 0444301 to Oliver C. Schultheiss. We are grateful to Scott Liening for serving as a second PSE coder in both studies. Scatterplot graphs with fitted regression lines illustrating the main findings of both studies can be obtained from the first author.
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Schultheiss, O.C., Hale, J.A. Implicit Motives Modulate Attentional Orienting to Facial Expressions of Emotion. Motiv Emot 31, 13–24 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-006-9042-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-006-9042-9