Emotional faces in neutral crowds: Detecting displays of anger, happiness, and sadness on schematic and photographic images of faces

Lipp, Ottmar V.; Price, Sarah M.; Tellegen, Cassandra L.

doi:10.1007/s11031-009-9136-2

Cited by 39 publications

(52 citation statements)

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“…The results obtained in the present experiments with static faces replicate previous findings showing that the ASE does not emerge when using photographs of realistic faces with different identities, which reproduce the natural variability of emotional expressions (Becker, Anderson et al, 2011;Becker et al, 2012;Calvo & Nummenmaa, 2008;Juth et al, 2005;Lipp, Price, & Tellegen, 2009a, 2009bPurcell et al, 1996). The novel result of the present study is that the same face identities can generate an ASE, if their facial expressions are displayed dynamically.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Anger superiority effect: The importance of dynamic emotional facial expressions

Ceccarini

Caudek

2013

Visual Cognition

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A rapid response to a threatening face in a crowd is important to successfully interact in social environments. Visual search tasks have been employed to determine whether there is a processing advantage for detecting an angry face in a crowd, compared to a happy face. The empirical findings supporting the ''anger superiority effect'' (ASE), however, have been criticized on the basis of possible lowlevel visual confounds and because of the limited ecological validity of the stimuli. Moreover, a ''happiness superiority effect'' is usually found with more realistic stimuli. In the present study, we tested the ASE by using dynamic (and static) images of realistic human faces, with validated emotional expressions having similar intensities, after controlling the bottom-up visual saliency and the amount of image motion. In five experiments, we found strong evidence for an ASE when using dynamic displays of facial expressions, but not when the emotions were expressed by static face images.Keywords: Anger superiority effect; Dynamic faces; Face-in-the-crowd effect; Face perception; Emotion.Evolutionary arguments may lead us to expect that threatening faces are detected more efficiently among a crowd of distractor faces than nonthreatening faces. Because facial threat provides a particularly potent social Please address all correspondence to Corrado Caudek, Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Pharmacology, and Child's Health (NEUROFARBA), University of Florence, Via di San Salvi 12, Complesso di San Salvi, Padiglione 26, 50135 Firenze, Italy. E-mail: corrado.caudek@unifi.it These findings suggest that the ASE might be mediated by mechanisms that are summoned only in part (or not at all) by stimuli lacking the typical dynamic characteristics of facial emotion in natural settings.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Anger superiority effect: The importance of dynamic emotional facial expressions

Ceccarini

Caudek

2013

Visual Cognition

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“…Thus, faster detection of angry targets may reflect on faster search through happy backgrounds. This confound can be avoided if participants are asked to search for emotional targets among neutral backgrounds, either within the same block or across blocks (Lipp, Price, & Tellegen, 2009a, 2009b. Experiments 1 and 2 were designed to address this issue.…”

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confidence: 99%

Visual search for schematic emotional faces: Angry faces are more than crosses

Dickins

Lipp

2013

Cognition and Emotion

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Recent studies of the face in the crowd effect, the faster detection of angry than of happy faces in visual search, suggest that for schematic faces it reflects on perceptual features like inward pointing lines rather than on emotional expressions. Removing a potential confound, Experiments 1-2 replicate the preferential detection of stimuli with inward pointing lines, but Experiment 2a indicates that a surrounding circle is required for the effect to emerge. Experiments 3-7 failed to find evidence for faster detection of schematic faces comprising only the elements critical for the faster detection of angry faces according to a low level visual feature account, inward tilted brows and upturned mouth. Faster detection of anger was evident if eyes or eyes and noses were added, but only if their placement was consistent with the first order relations among these elements in a human face. Drawing the critical elements in thicker, higher contrast lines also led to an anger advantage, but this was smaller than that seen for the complete faces. The present results suggest that, while able to support faster target detection, a prevalence of inward pointing lines is not sufficient to explain the detection advantage of angry schematic faces.

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“…The aim of Experiment 3 was to determine whether the HSE with schematic faces in heterogeneous backgrounds observed in Experiments 1 and 2 could be replicated using the original Lipp et al (2009), stimuli which included facial circumferences. Although these exact same stimuli elicited an ASE when presented among homogeneous neutral backgrounds in the original Lipp et al…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To do this, we replicate Experiment 2 with the original Lipp et al (2009), stimuli which include facial circumferences. Given that heterogeneous backgrounds are used, we predict that a HSE will be observed.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Face to face: flexibility in the processing of multiple facial cues

Craig¹

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Early models of face processing proposed that facial cues indicating a person's sex, race, and age, were processed separately from variant cues like emotional expression. Additionally, early theories of emotion perception suggested that processing of emotional expressions was unaffected by the situations in which the expressions were encountered. Subsequent research has demonstrated that this is not the case. The processing of emotional expressions is influenced by a range of contextual factors as well as by other social category cues present on the face. However, the manner in which the multiple sources of information on a face are integrated and how this integration is influenced by situational factors is not yet fully understood. Thus, the overall aim of this thesis was to extend our understanding of the influence of higher order cognitive states on the interaction of facial cues and social categories in the face, specifically in the processing of emotional expressions.This thesis describes a range of investigations, across a range of methods (including affective priming, visual search, and categorization) of how explicitly and implicitly activated higher order cognitive states influence the interaction of multiple facial cues and categories. Higher order cognitive states were manipulated explicitly by instructing participants to focus on different kinds of information available within the face. Higher order cognitive states were elicited implicitly by altering the other faces seen at the same time as the target face, altering the other faces seen on different trials within the same task, or altering the other faces seen in recently completed tasks.Using the affective priming method, Chapter 2 demonstrated that implicit evaluations were more strongly influenced by the emotional expression displayed on the face primes than the social category, including race, sex, and age of the face. An influence of the social category was only observed when participants were instructed to focus on this dimension. This demonstrated that the nature of the task can influence the way in which cues like race, sex, age and emotion interact.Using the visual search paradigm, Chapter 3 demonstrated that the nature of the background faces in a visual search task alters which expressions are more quickly detected. Happy faces were detected faster in backgrounds made up of a range of different emotional faces whereas angry faces tended to be detected faster in homogenous backgrounds made up of faces expressing the same emotion.In Chapter 4.1, it was shown that the way facial cues of race influence the categorization of happy and angry emotional expressions depended on the presentation duration, stimulus type and importantly the number of different faces presented within a task. Chapter 4.2 investigated whether this finding could be accounted for with the perceptual load hypothesis and found it to be an unlikely explanation for the different patterns of results observed at small and large set.Finally, Chapter 5 demonstrated that ...

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Emotional faces in neutral crowds: Detecting displays of anger, happiness, and sadness on schematic and photographic images of faces

Cited by 39 publications

References 33 publications

Anger superiority effect: The importance of dynamic emotional facial expressions

Anger superiority effect: The importance of dynamic emotional facial expressions

Visual search for schematic emotional faces: Angry faces are more than crosses

Face to face: flexibility in the processing of multiple facial cues

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