ABSTRACTUsing faces as the priming stimuli, the present study explored the influence of facial expressions on the activation of gender stereotypes using a lexical decision paradigm. Experiment 1 explored the activation of gender stereotypes when the facial primes contained only gender information. The results showed that gender stereotypes were activated. In Experiment 2, the facial primes contained both gender category and expression information. The results indicated that gender stereotypes were not activated. Experiment 3 required the participants to make emotion, gender, (...) or impression decisions concerning the facial primes before the lexical decision task. The results showed that gender stereotypes were not activated in emotion and impression decisions conditions, whereas stereotypes were activated in gender decisions condition. These finding suggest that facial expressions can inhibit automatic activation of gender stereotypes, unless the perceivers perform gender categorization processing to prime f... (shrink)

Recently, researchers have expanded the investigation into attentional biases toward positive stimuli; however, few studies have examined attentional biases toward positive auditory information. In three experiments, the present study employed an emotional spatial cueing task using emotional sounds as cues and auditory stimuli or visual stimuli as targets to explore whether auditory or visual spatial attention could be modulated by positive auditory cues. Experiment 3 also examined the temporal dynamics of cross-modal auditory bias toward positive natural sounds using event-related potentials. (...) The behavioral results of the three experiments consistently demonstrated that response times to targets were faster after positive auditory cues than they were after neutral auditory cues in the valid condition, indicating that healthy participants showed a selective auditory attentional bias and cross-modal attentional bias toward positive natural sounds. The results of Experiment 3 showed that N1 amplitudes were more negative after positive sounds than they were after neutral sounds, which further provided electrophysiological evidence that positive auditory information enhances attention at early stages in healthy adults. The results of the experiments performed in the present study suggest that humans exhibit an attentional bias toward positive natural sounds. (shrink)

Parkinson´s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by motor symptoms following dopaminergic depletion in the substantia nigra. Besides motor impairments however, several non-motor detriments can have the potential to considerably impact subjectively perceived quality of life in patients. Particularly emotion recognition of facial expressions has been shown to be affected in PD, and especially the perception of negative emotions like fear, anger or disgust is impaired. While emotion processing generally refers to automatic implicit as well as conscious explicit processing, (...) the focus of most previous studies in PD was on explicit recognition of emotions only, while largely ignoring implicit processing deficits. Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN-DBS) is widely accepted as therapeutic measure in the treatment of PD and has been shown to advantageously influence motor problems. Among various concomitant non-motor effects of STN-DBS, modulation of facial emotion recognition under subthalamic stimulation has been investigated in previous studies with rather heterogeneous results. While there seems to be consensus regarding the processing of disgust which significantly deteriorates under STN stimulation, findings concerning emotions like fear or happiness report heterogeneous data and seem to depend on various experimental settings and measurements. In the present review, we summarized previous investigations focusing on STN-DBS influence on recognition of facial emotional expressions in patients suffering from PD. In a first step, we provide a synopsis of disturbances and problems in facial emotion processing observed in patients with PD. Secondly, we present findings of STN-DBS influence on facial emotion recognition and especially highlight different impacts of stimulation on implicit and explicit emotional processing. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of numeracy and the emotion of fear on the decision-making process. While previous research demonstrated that these factors are independently related to search effort, search policy and choice in a decision from experience task, less is known about how their interaction contributes to processing information under uncertainty. We attempted to address this problem and to fill this gap. In the present study, we hypothesized that more numerate people would sample more (...) information about a decision problem and that the effect of fear would depend on the source of this emotion: whether it is integral (i.e., relevant) or incidental (i.e., irrelevant) to a decision problem. Additionally, we tested how these factors predict choices. We addressed these hypotheses in a series of two experiments. In each experiment, we used a sampling paradigm to measure search effort, search policy and choice in nine binary problems included in a decision from experience task. In Experiment 1, before the sampling task we elicited incidental fear by asking participants to recall fearful events from their life. In Experiment 2, integral fear was elicited by asking participants to make choices concerning medical treatment. Decision problems and their payoff distributions were the same in the two experiments and across each condition. In both experiments, we assessed objective statistical numeracy and controlled for a change in the current emotional state. We found that more numerate people sampled more information about a decision problem and switched less frequently between alternatives. Incidental fear marginally predicted search effort. Integral fear led to larger sample sizes, but only among more numerate people. Neither numeracy nor fear were related to the number of choices that maximized expected values. However, across two experiments sample sizes predicted the number of choices that maximized experienced mean returns. The findings suggest that people with higher numeracy may be more sensitive to integral emotions; this may result in more effortful sampling of relevant information leading to choices maximizing experienced returns. (shrink)

Previous studies suggest that ancient threats capture attention because human beings possess an inborn module shaped by evolution and dedicated to their detection. An alternative account proposes that a key feature predicting whether a stimulus will capture attention is its relevance rather than its ontology. Within this framework, the present research deals with the attentional capture by threats commonly encountered in our urban environment. In two experiments, we investigate the attentional capture by modern threats. In Experiment 1, participants responded to (...) a target preceded by a cue, which was a weapon or a non-threatening stimulus. We found a larger cuing effect with weapons as compared with non-threatening cues. In Experiment 2, modern and ancient threats were pitted against one another as cues to determine which ones preferentially capture attention. Crucially, participants were faster to detect a target preceded by a modern as opposed to an ancient threat, providing initial evidence for a superiority of modern threat. Overall, the present findings appear more consistent with a relevance-based explanation rather than an evolutionary-based explanation of threat detection. (shrink)

The nonconscious orientation of attention to famous faces was investigated using masked 17 ms stimulus exposure. Each trial presented a simultaneous pair of one famous and one unfamiliar face, matched on physical characteristics, one each in left visual field (LVF) and right visual field (RVF). These were followed by a dot probe in either LVF or RVF to which participants made a speeded two-alternative forced-choice discrimination response. Participants subsequently evaluated the affective valence (good/evil) of the famous persons on a 7-point (...) scale. Higher accuracy of dot probe discrimination in the same visual field (VF) as the famous face suggested that attention was oriented towards faces of persons evaluated “good”, but a reverse orientation effect was observed for those evaluated “evil”. The awareness check presented the same face pairs under the same conditions, and participants were at chance in a task of selecting the famous face in each pair. The results suggest that famous faces can be identified without awareness, and that attention is attracted by the faces of famous persons not regarded as “evil”. (shrink)

Attention-driven bias for threat-related stimuli in implicit memory. Preliminary results from the Posner cueing paradigm An implicit memory advantage for angry faces was investigated in this experiment by means of an additional cueing task. Participants were to assess the orientation of a triangle's peak, which side of presentation was cued informatively by angry and neutral face stimuli, after which they immediately completed an unexpected "old-new" task on a set of the previously presented faces and new, distractor-faces. Surprisingly, the RTs were (...) similarly long on the invalid trials for angry and neutral facial cues in the Posner task. However, performance on the "old-new" task was better for angry than neutral faces. A strong correlation between RTs in angry-invalid trials and confidence ratings for these angry faces was observed only in highly reactive participants. These results suggest that presentation of threatening material can induce enhanced incidental encoding which can result in stronger familiarity for such material, and this effect is driven by attentional bias in highly reactive individuals. (shrink)

It has long been suggested that emotion, especially threatening emotion, facilitates early visual perception to promote adaptive responses to potential threats in the environment. Here, we tested whether and how fearful emotion affects the basic visual ability of visual acuity. An adapted Posner’s spatial cueing task was employed, with fearful and neutral faces as cues and a Vernier discrimination task as the probe. The time course of the emotional attention effect was examined by varying the stimulus onset asynchrony of the (...) cue and probe. Two independent experiments consistently demonstrated that the brief presentation of a fearful face increased visual acuity at its location. The facilitation of perceptual sensitivity was detected at an SOA around 300 ms when the face cues were presented for both 250 ms and 150 ms. This effect cannot be explained by physical differences between the fearful and neutral faces because no improvement was found when the faces were presented inverted. In the last experiment, the face cues were flashed very briefly, and we did not find any improvement induced by the fearful face. Overall, we provide evidence that emotion interacts with attention to affect basic visual functions. (shrink)

Research on automatic attention to emotional faces offers mixed results. Therefore we examined validity effects for facial expressions of different emotions with a dot-probe paradigm in seven studies. Systematic variations of type of emotion, CTI, task, cue size, and masking allow for a differentiated assessment of attentional capture by emotions and possible moderating factors. Results indicate a general absence of emotional validity effects as well as a lack of significant interactions with either of the manipulated factors, indicating that facial expressions (...) of emotions do not capture attention in a fully automatic fashion. These findings suggest that situational and contextual factors have to be taken into account when investigating attentional capture of emotional faces. (shrink)

In this commentary, I argue that the cognitive-emotional framework put forward by Pessoa (2013) can be successfully applied to psychopathology and, in particular, to the reasoning of delusional subjects. More specifically, I show that the notion of executive competition offers a significant contribution to the idea that delusions may involve both executive and emotional dysfunctions.

ABSTRACTWith a series of three studies, using an adapted dot-probe paradigm, we investigated the elicitation of spontaneous affective meaning. Although it is well established that humans show delays in disengaging their attention from conventional affective stimuli, it is unknown whether contextually acquired affective meaning similarly impacts attention. We examined attentional disengagement following pairs of neutral or slightly ambiguous words that in combination could evoke sex, violence or neutral associations. Study 1 demonstrated slower disengagement following words that conveyed sex or violence (...) associations compared to words that conveyed neutral associations. This pattern was only present for participants who were aware of sex or violence associations. Study 2 replicated these results in a large sample, but only for sex associations. Study 3 replicated the effect while instructing participants explicitly to expect sex and violence associations. Finally, two control studies countered reasonable alternative explanations for our findings. Together, these studies show that contextually driven affective associations can arise quickly with the potential to influence attentional processes. These findings are consistent with theoretical models of emotion and language that highlight the importance of context in the generation of affective meaning. (shrink)

Ethical leadership is an important construct in the literature on behavioral ethics in organizations, given its link with employee attitudes and behaviors. What remains unclear, however, is what leader characteristics are associated directly with ethical leader perceptions and indirectly with employee unethical behavior. In this paper, we use a socio-cognitive lens to integrate goal orientation theory with the literature on ethical behavior in organizations. Specifically, we propose that certain patterns of managers’ goal-oriented behavior provide signals and cues to employees about (...) their managers’ ethical leadership, which then relates to employee displays of more unethical behavior. Using a sample of 265 manager–employee dyads, our findings largely support our claims. We found that leader performance-avoid goal orientation was negatively related to perceptions of ethical leadership and positively related to employee unethical behavior. Moderated mediation tests indicated that the positive indirect effect of leader performance-avoid goal orientation on employee unethical behavior through perceptions of ethical leadership was attenuated by higher levels of leader learning goal orientation. Taken together, these findings suggest that when leaders emphasize avoiding failure while downplaying the importance of personal learning and development, employees perceive them as less ethical and are more willing to engage in ethical misconduct. We discuss implications of our findings for both theory and practice. (shrink)

We investigated whether adults have attentional bias toward infant faces, whether it is moderated by infant facial expression, and the predictive effect of the adult attachment state on it. One hundred unmarried nulliparous college students [50 men and 50 women; aged 17–24 years ] were recruited. Each completed a self-report questionnaire—the Chinese version of the State Adult Attachment Measure, and a dot-probe task with a stimulus presentation duration of 500 ms, which used 192 black-and-white photographs of 64 people as the (...) experimental stimuli. The results showed that, at the duration of 500 ms, individuals' attentional bias toward infant faces disappeared, regardless of the facial expression. However, when the interaction between avoidant attachment state and face was controlled, the attentional bias was significant again, and the avoidant attachment state negatively predicted individuals' attentional bias toward infant faces. This indicates that at the suprathreshold stage, there are individual differences in the attentional bias toward infant faces, and high avoidant attachment will weaken individuals' attentional bias toward infant faces. This study advances previous studies that focused only on individuals' attention to infant faces occurring at the early processing stage of attention. The results provide direction for interventions; specifically, changing the attachment state of avoidant individuals can affect their attention to infants, which may promote the establishment of parent–child relationships. (shrink)

Countless studies have reported that individuals detect threatening/angry faces faster than happy/neutral faces. Two classic views have been used to explain this phenomenon—that negative valence drives the effect, or conversely, that low-level perceptual characteristics of the stimuli are responsible for their rapid detection. In the current review, I question whether dichotomous perspectives are the most parsimonious way to explain a large and inconsistent literature. Further, I argue that nondichotomous, multicomponent accounts for the detection of emotionally valenced stimuli might help take (...) us beyond traditional approaches to visual detection research, and I suggest various ways in which future research can use these newer approaches to more effectively elucidate the mechanisms underlying the rapid detection of emotionally valenced stimuli. (shrink)

Volume 34, Issue 8, December 2020, Page 1591-1607.