16:30 - 18:00
Mon-A8-Talk III-
Mon-Talk III-
Room: A8
Chair/s:
Michaela Rohr
Emotional faces are one of the most prominent sources for social inferences, and many of these inferences come along automatic (i.e., fast, efficient, unintentional, non-consciously). Research in this field has a long tradition in experimental psychology, and many implicit methods were developed to target the processing of social information from faces. Yet, the research so far focused mostly on the evaluative dimension, static features, and lab experiments. Our symposium brings together latest research approaches studying the influence of emotional faces in social cognition, using new (potentially more ecologically valid) approaches, and spanning some of the most recent debated issues. In detail, Emre Gurbuz’ talk focuses on the dynamics of facial features (i.e., emotion, ethnicity) and how these impact evaluative priming effects – a so far often neglected issue. Vanessa Mitschke’s research is targeting reactions to others with a very different, yet also dynamic approach: In a series of studies, she found more efficient response inhibition of facial muscle activation towards disliked targets in a go/nogo task. Janet Wessler investigated the influence of facial information in online-negotiations, showing that facial trustworthiness influences anchoring effects. Using a new, endogenous cueing paradigm, Timea Folyi and colleagues highlight that emotional information can be used in a flexible, goal-relevant manner, however, only, if participants intentionally and explicitly make use of the context-bound meaning of the emotional faces. Michaela Rohr’s talk focuses on the role of physiological facial information in behavioral measures, suggesting that simulation of activated mental content might drive physiological activity.Emotional faces are one of the most prominent sources for social inferences, and many of these inferences come along automatic (i.e., fast, efficient, unintentional, non-consciously). Research in this field has a long tradition in experimental psychology, and many implicit methods were developed to
target the processing of social information from faces. Yet, the research so far focused mostly on the evaluative dimension, static features, and lab experiments. Our symposium brings together latest research approaches studying the influence of emotional faces in social cognition, using new (potentially more ecologically valid) approaches, and spanning some of the most recent debated issues. In detail, Emre Gurbuz’ talk focuses on the dynamics of facial features (i.e., emotion, ethnicity) and how these impact evaluative priming effects – a so far often neglected issue. Vanessa Mitschke’s research is targeting reactions to others with a very different, yet also dynamic
approach: In a series of studies, she found more efficient response inhibition of facial muscle activation towards disliked targets in a go/nogo task. Janet Wessler investigated the influence of facial information in online-negotiations, showing that facial trustworthiness influences anchoring effects. Using a new, endogenous cueing paradigm, Timea Folyi and colleagues highlight that emotional information can be used in a flexible, goal-relevant manner, however, only, if participants intentionally and explicitly make use of the context-bound meaning of the emotional faces. Michaela Rohr’s talk focuses on the role of physiological facial information in behavioral measures, suggesting that simulation of activated mental content might drive physiological activity.
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The role of facial muscle activity in explicit and implicit processing conditions: Sensorimotor simulation, emotional reaction or (evaluative) inference of content?
Mon-A8-Talk III-05
Presented by: Michaela Rohr
Michaela Rohr, Timea Folyi, Dirk Wentura
Saarland University
Facial muscle responses to emotional facial expressions are seen as indices for the involvement of affect-related, physiological processes. Typically, people react with responses congruent to the visual percept, interpreted as “facial mimicry”, or sensorimotor simulation. However, sometimes emotional reactions not congruent to the visually perceived emotion are observed. Moreover, such responses are not observed under all processing conditions, so that it is still unclear when they are triggered, what they reflect and which function they serve.
In the present study, we investigated the functional role of facial muscle responses under different processing conditions: Participants task was to intentionally categorize clearly visible emotional facial expressions (Exp. 1) of five emotion categories, or to categorize neutral-looking faces with regard to the allegedly felt emotion (i.e., joy, anger, fear, sadness, disgust) in a masked emotion misattribution procedure (Exp. 2). In both experiments, activity of five facial muscles as well as behavioral responses were assessed on a trial-by-trial basis.
Results revealed emotion-specific facial muscle activity and correct categorization for visible intentional processing. Under masked presentation conditions, a specific behavioral pattern of emotion-congruent as well as cross-category misattributions was observed (e.g., anger-fear) similar to Rohr et al. (2015). Importantly, the observed facial muscle activity mirrored the cross-category misattributions and multi-level analyses showed that the activity contributed partially to the choice of the behavioral response. We discuss whether this pattern of results indicates an emotional reaction to the primes which is fed into the behavioral decision, or whether a semantic concept is inferred and then simulated.
Keywords: misattribution, emotion, affect, implicit processing, facial muscle activity, EMG, masked
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