Finding the face in the crowd: an anger superiority effect

Facial gestures have been given an increasingly critical role in models of emotion. The biological significance of interindividual transmission of emotional signals is a pivotal assumption for placing the face in a central position in these models. This assumption invited a logical corollary, examin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of personality and social psychology Vol. 54; no. 6; p. 917
Main Authors Hansen, C H, Hansen, R D
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 01.06.1988
Subjects
Anger
Attention
Discrimination Learning
Facial Expression
Form Perception
Humans
Pattern Recognition, Visual
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Summary:Facial gestures have been given an increasingly critical role in models of emotion. The biological significance of interindividual transmission of emotional signals is a pivotal assumption for placing the face in a central position in these models. This assumption invited a logical corollary, examined in this article: Face-processing should be highly efficient. Three experiments documented an asymmetry in the processing of emotionally discrepant faces embedded in crowds. The results suggested that threatening faces pop out of crowds, perhaps as a result of a preattentive, parallel search for signals of direct threat.
ISSN:0022-3514
1939-1315
DOI:10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.917