Angry, disgusted, or afraid? Studies on the malleability of emotion perception.
Current theories of emotion perception posit that basic facial expressions signal categorically discrete emotions or affective dimensions of valence and arousal. In both cases, the information is thought to be directly "read out" from the face in a way that is largely immune to context. In contrast, the three studies reported here demonstrated that identical facial configurations convey strikingly different emotions and dimensional values depending on the affective context in which they are embedded. This effect is modulated by the similarity between the target facial expression and the facial expression typically associated with the context. Moreover, by monitoring eye movements, we demonstrated that characteristic fixation patterns previously thought to be determined solely by the facial expression are systematically modulated by emotional context already at very early stages of visual processing, even by the first time the face is fixated. Our results indicate that the perception of basic facial expressions is not context invariant and can be categorically altered by context at early perceptual levels.
Aviezer
Hillel
H
Department of Psychology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91905, Israel. hillel.aviezer@mail.huji.ac.il
Hassin
Ran R
RR
Ryan
Jennifer
J
Grady
Cheryl
C
Susskind
Josh
J
Anderson
Adam
A
Moscovitch
Morris
M
Bentin
Shlomo
S
D000293:Adolescent; D000339:Affect; D000786:Anger; D005149:Facial Expression; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012938:Social Perception; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult