title: Anger superiority effect for change detection and change blindness.
abstract: In visual search, an angry face in a crowd "pops out" unlike a happy or a neutral face. This "anger superiority effect" conflicts with views of visual perception holding that complex stimulus contents cannot be detected without focused top-down attention. Implicit visual processing of threatening changes was studied by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) using facial stimuli using the change blindness paradigm, in which conscious change detection is eliminated by presenting a blank screen before the changes. Already before their conscious detection, angry faces modulated relatively early emotion sensitive ERPs when appearing among happy and neutral faces, but happy faces only among neutral, not angry faces. Conscious change detection was more efficient for angry than happy faces regardless of background. These findings indicate that the brain can implicitly extract complex emotional information from facial stimuli, and the biological relevance of threatening contents can speed up their break up into visual consciousness.
authors.affiliation: Human Information Processing Laboratory, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Tampere, FIN-33014 Tampere, Finland; Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, PO Box 35, FIN-40014 Jyväskylä, Finland. Electronic address: pessi.lyyra@uta.fi.
authors.forename: Pessi
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Lyyra
authors.affiliation: Human Information Processing Laboratory, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Tampere, FIN-33014 Tampere, Finland.
authors.forename: Jari K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Hietanen
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, PO Box 35, FIN-40014 Jyväskylä, Finland.
authors.forename: Piia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Astikainen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000786:Anger / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000379:methods; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006240:Happiness; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D012938:Social Perception; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Anger superiority effect; Change blindness; Change detection; EPN; Face perception; N170; Nonconscious perception