Negative facial expression captures attention and disrupts performance.

Full Abstract

In two experiments, participants counted features of schematic faces with positive, negative, or neutral emotional expressions. In Experiment 1 it was found that counting features took longer when they were embedded in negative as opposed to positive faces. Experiment 2 replicated the results of Experiment 1 and also demonstrated that more time was required to count features of negative relative to neutral faces. However, in both experiments, when the faces were inverted to reduce holistic face perception, no differences between neutral, positive, and negative faces were observed, even though the feature information in the inverted faces was the same as in the upright faces. We suggest that, relative to neutral and positive faces, negative faces are particularly effective at capturing attention to the global face level and thereby make it difficult to count the local features of faces.

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Author information

Author/s: Eastwood, John D (JD); Smilek, Daniel (D); Merikle, Philip M (PM);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. johneast(-atsign-)yorku.ca

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Perception & psychophysics (Percept Psychophys), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Apr; vol 65 (issue 3) : pp 352-8

Dates: Created 2003/06/04; Completed 2003/07/08; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12785065, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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