title: Trait dominance promotes reflexive staring at masked angry body postures.
abstract: It has been shown that dominant individuals sustain eye-contact when non-consciously confronted with angry faces, suggesting reflexive mechanisms underlying dominance behaviors. However, dominance and submission can be conveyed and provoked by means of not only facial but also bodily features. So far few studies have investigated the interplay of body postures with personality traits and behavior, despite the biological relevance and ecological validity of these postures. Here we investigate whether non-conscious exposure to bodily expressions of anger evokes reflex-like dominance behavior. In an interactive eye-tracking experiment thirty-two participants completed three social dominance tasks with angry, happy and neutral facial, bodily and face and body compound expressions that were masked from consciousness. We confirmed our predictions of slower gaze-aversion from both non-conscious bodily and compound expressions of anger compared to happiness in high dominant individuals. Results from a follow-up experiment suggest that the dominance behavior triggered by exposure to bodily anger occurs with basic detection of the category, but not recognition of the emotional content. Together these results suggest that dominant staring behavior is reflexively driven by non-conscious perception of the emotional content and triggered by not only facial but also bodily expression of anger.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Ruud
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hortensius
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands; Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa; Institute of Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
authors.forename: Jack
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: van Honk
authors.affiliation: Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands; Brain and Emotion Laboratory, Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands; Brain and Emotion Laboratory Leuven, Division of Psychiatry, Department of Neurosciences, KU Leuven, Leuven Belgium.
authors.forename: Beatrice
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: de Gelder
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands; Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Terburg
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000786:Anger; D004291:Dominance-Subordination; D005133:Eye Movements; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006240:Happiness; D064368:Healthy Volunteers; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011187:Posture; D055815:Young Adult