title: Event-Related Potential Responses to Beloved and Familiar Faces in Different Marriage Styles: Evidence from Mosuo Subjects.
abstract: Research on familiar face recognition has largely focused on the neural correlates of recognizing a beloved partner or family member. However, no research has explored the effect of marriage style on the recognition of a beloved partner's face, especially in matriarchal societies. Here, we examined the time course of event-related potentials (ERP) in response to the face of a beloved partner, sibling, or unknown person in a sample of individuals from the matriarchal Mosuo tribe. Two groups were assessed: intermarriage and walking marriage groups (i.e., couples in a committed relationship who do not cohabitate during the daytime). In agreement with previous reports, ERP results revealed more positive VPP, N250, and P300 waveforms for beloved faces than sibling faces in both groups. Moreover, P300 was more positive for beloved partner versus sibling faces; however, this difference emerged at fronto-central sites for the walking marriage group and at posterior sites for the intermarriage group. Overall, we observed that marriage style affects the later stage processing of a beloved partner's face, and this may be associated with greater affective arousal and familiarity.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of SciencesBeijing, China; State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal UniversityBeijing, China.
authors.forename: Haiyan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: School of Education, Guangzhou University Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.affiliation: School of Education, Guangzhou University Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Junqiang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Dai
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Exercise and Health Sciences of Ministry of Education, Shanghai University of Sport Shanghai, China.
authors.forename: Suyong
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Educational Psychology and School Counselling, Beijing Normal University Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Naiyi
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Affective and Social Neuroscience, College of Psychology and Sociology, Shenzhen UniversityShenzhen, China; Institute of NeuroscienceShenzhen, China.
authors.forename: Yue-Jia
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Luo
keywords: affective processing; event-related potentials; familiar faces; love