When angry faces are just (a) cross

The face-in-the-crowd effect: when angry faces are just cross(es).

A common theme running through much of the visual recognition literature is that faces are special. Many studies now describe evidence for the idea that faces are processed in a dedicated center in cortex. Studies have also argued for the presence of evolutionarily expedient pathways dedicated to the processing of certain facial expressions. Evidence for this proposal comes largely from visual ...

Angry faces are tracked more easily than neutral faces during multiple identity tracking.

We investigated whether and how emotional facial expressions affect sustained attention in face tracking. In a multiple-identity and object tracking paradigm, participants tracked multiple target faces that continuously moved around together with several distractor faces, and subsequently reported where each target face had moved to. The emotional expression (angry, happy, and neutral) of the t...

Don't make me angry, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry: Volitional choices to act or inhibit are modulated by subliminal perception of emotional faces.

Volitional action and self-control-feelings of acting according to one's own intentions and in being control of one's own actions-are fundamental aspects of human conscious experience. However, it is unknown whether high-level cognitive control mechanisms are affected by socially salient but nonconscious emotional cues. In this study, we manipulated free choice decisions to act or withhold an a...

When are effective medications just too expensive?

Reappraisal Modulates Attentional Bias to Angry Faces

Heightened attentional bias to emotional information is one of the main characteristics of disorders related to emotion dysregulation such as anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. Although reappraisal, an emotion regulation strategy, is known to effectively modulate subjective experience of emotions, it remains unknown whether reappraisal can alter attentional biases to emotional informatio...