Desperately seeking friends: How expectation of punishment modulates attention to angry and happy faces

Vermeulen, Nicolas [UCL] Pleyers, Gordy [UCL] Mermillod, Martial [Université Grenoble Alpes, France] Corneille, Olivier [UCL] Schaefer, Alexandre [Monash University, Malaysia]

In the literature, a well-known processing advantage for angry schematic faces was largely observed in the “Face in the Crowd” (FIC) visual search task. A debate about automaticity and guidance of these effects by emotional/perceptual features is still raging. In order to modify the emotional context, the present study used a state of expectation of punishment (versus safety state). There was an angry superiority effect in the present study. However, we hypothesized and found that the presentation of a cue signalling an imminent threat (punishment) prior to the FIC task impairs the well-known processing advantage for angry schematic faces. On the reverse, the threat cue also facilitates the detection of happy (smiling) schematic faces. These results suggest that selective attention serves at least two basic affective purposes: (1) To efficiently detect threatening signals and (2) to detect potential coping resources in the environment, depending on motivational context. These findings are further discussed in terms of the threat detection system whose role is to respond to potentially dangerous situations [Öhman, A., & Mineka, S. (2001). Fears, phobias, and preparedness: Toward an evolved module of fear and fear learning. Psychological Review, 108(3), 483–522] and with regards to the counter-regulation principle which suggests that people may be biased towards searching for objects whose valence is opposite to their current affective state [Rothermund, K., Voss, A., & Wentura, D. (2008). Counter-regulation in affective attentional biases: A basic mechanism that warrants flexibility in emotion and motivation. Emotion, 8(1), 34–46].