Invisible expressions evoke core impressions.

Laeng, Bruno; Profeti, Italo; Sæther, Line; Adólfsdóttir, Steinunn; Lundervold, Astri J.; Vangberg, Torgil; Øvervoll, Morten; Johnsen, Stein Harald; Waterloo, Knut

doi:10.1037/a0018689

Cited by 42 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 103 publications

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“…The present findings are a successful replication of the original findings of Laeng et al (2010; see also Leknes et al, 2013) regarding changes in social judgments that occur unconsciously as an effect of the low-spatial frequency information that is embedded or “hidden” within the hybrid face stimuli. The pupillary responses also revealed a consistent pattern, where the negative low-passed expressions caused the largest changes in pupillary dilations, with fear and anger causing the largest responses.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…According to a large-scale validation study of the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces, this included images of 20 male and 20 female models that displayed a neutral expression as well as four emotional expressions (anger, fear, happiness, and sadness). Hybrid faces were created using MatLab® software, according to a method described in Laeng and colleagues (2010) so that emotional facial expressions (anger, fear, happiness, and sadness) were presented only in low spatial frequency (<6 cycles/image) and embedded within neutral facial images of the same model shown in the rest of the bandwidth (>24 cycles/image). This cycles/image of the low-pass versions was chosen as the amygdala has been shown to respond to low spatial frequencies of <6 cycles/image but not to >24 cycles/image (Vuilleumier et al, 2003).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a previous study with healthy participants (Laeng et al, 2010) we used face “amalgamations” or face hybrids to induce unconscious processing in healthy individuals of emotional facial expressions that were never consciously recognized as emotional but consistently categorized as “neutral.” Specifically, by using graphic-processing techniques based on Fourier transforms, we merged a filtered low-visual frequency image of an emotional expression (a happy, fearful, or angry face photograph) with a high-frequency image of a neutral facial expression (a neutral face photograph), which masked subjective perception of the low-frequency emotional expression (see Figure 1 for an illustration of the procedure). We garnered evidence that when viewing the amalgamation or “face hybrid”, observers were only aware of seeing the neutral face and the emotional perception was not perceived consciously regardless of focusing attention on the image for several seconds.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Invisible emotional expressions influence social judgments and pupillary responses of both depressed and non-depressed individuals

et al. 2013

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We used filtered low spatial frequency images of facial emotional expressions (angry, fearful, happy, sad, or neutral faces) that were blended with a high-frequency image of the same face but with a neutral facial expression, so as to obtain a “hybrid” face image that “masked” the subjective perception of its emotional expression. Participants were categorized in three groups of participants: healthy control participants (N = 49), recovered previously depressed (N = 79), and currently depressed individuals (N = 36), All participants were asked to rate how friendly the person in the picture looked. Simultaneously we recorded, by use of an infrared eye-tracker, their pupillary responses. We expected that depressed individuals (either currently or previously depressed) would show a negative bias and therefore rate the negative emotional faces, albeit the emotions being invisible, as more negative (i.e., less friendly) than the healthy controls would. Similarly, we expected that depressed individuals would overreact to the negative emotions and that this would result in greater dilations of the pupil's diameter than those shown by controls for the same emotions. Although we observed the expected pattern of effects of the hidden emotions on both ratings and pupillary changes, both responses did not differ significantly among the three groups of participants. The implications of this finding are discussed.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Invisible emotional expressions influence social judgments and pupillary responses of both depressed and non-depressed individuals

et al. 2013

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“…Indeed, some of the most relevant preferences from an evolutionary viewpoint may occur unconsciously and when made aware they may be subjected to revision or ‘editing’ and possibly lead to less spontaneous responses and a change towards more socially accepted choices [35]. Several psychological studies have revealed that stimuli processed unconsciously can activate a broad variety of processes [52], as shown for example by research on subliminal perception of emotional expression [53], [54], [55] as well as of attractiveness [56], [57]. In addition, “mere exposure” at the subliminal level [58] can produce significant changes in the affective responses to the unconsciously processed stimuli.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is Beauty in the Face of the Beholder?

2013

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Opposing forces influence assortative mating so that one seeks a similar mate while at the same time avoiding inbreeding with close relatives. Thus, mate choice may be a balancing of phenotypic similarity and dissimilarity between partners. In the present study, we assessed the role of resemblance to Self’s facial traits in judgments of physical attractiveness. Participants chose the most attractive face image of their romantic partner among several variants, where the faces were morphed so as to include only 22% of another face. Participants distinctly preferred a “Self-based morph” (i.e., their partner’s face with a small amount of Self’s face blended into it) to other morphed images. The Self-based morph was also preferred to the morph of their partner’s face blended with the partner’s same-sex “prototype”, although the latter face was (“objectively”) judged more attractive by other individuals. When ranking morphs differing in level of amalgamation (i.e., 11% vs. 22% vs. 33%) of another face, the 22% was chosen consistently as the preferred morph and, in particular, when Self was blended in the partner’s face. A forced-choice signal-detection paradigm showed that the effect of self-resemblance operated at an unconscious level, since the same participants were unable to detect the presence of their own faces in the above morphs. We concluded that individuals, if given the opportunity, seek to promote “positive assortment” for Self’s phenotype, especially when the level of similarity approaches an optimal point that is similar to Self without causing a conscious acknowledgment of the similarity.

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“…However, there is also accumulating evidence that at least unaware discrimination of facial emotional expression could also be carried out along the SC projection (cf. Hess, Reginald, Grammer, & Kleck, 2009;Laeng et al, 2010). Therefore, the degree to which the SC is involved during subliminal face processing might vary with the task.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subcortical human face processing? Evidence from masked priming.

Khalid¹,

Finkbeiner²,

König³

et al. 2013

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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Face processing without awareness might depend on subcortical structures (retino-collicular projection), cortical structures, or a combination of the two. The present study was designed to tease apart these possibilities. Because the retino-collicular projection is more sensitive to low spatial frequencies, we used masked (subliminal) face prime images that were spatially low-pass filtered, or high-pass filtered. The masked primes were presented in the periphery prior to clearly visible target faces. Participants had to discriminate between male and female target faces and we recorded prime-target congruence effectsthat is, the difference in discrimination speed between congruent pairs (with prime and target of the same sex) and incongruent pairs (with prime and target of different sexes). In two experiments, we consistently find that masked low-pass filtered face primes produce a congruence effect and that masked high-pass filtered face primes do not. Together our results support the assumption that the retino-collicular route which carries the low spatial frequencies also conveys sex specific features of face images contributing to subliminal face processing.

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Invisible expressions evoke core impressions.

Cited by 42 publications

References 103 publications

Invisible emotional expressions influence social judgments and pupillary responses of both depressed and non-depressed individuals

Invisible emotional expressions influence social judgments and pupillary responses of both depressed and non-depressed individuals

Is Beauty in the Face of the Beholder?

Subcortical human face processing? Evidence from masked priming.

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