It takes a confounded face to pop out of a crowd

It is widely reported that a picture of an angry face seems to figuratively pop out of an array of happy faces, although all of these reports are based on a single experiment by Hansen and Hansen. Pop out, when it occurs, indicates that an observer has located the target by means of a preattentive,...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inPerception (London) Vol. 25; no. 9; p. 1091
Main Authors Purcell, D G, Stewart, A L, Skov, R B
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 01.01.1996
Subjects
Emotions
Facial Expression
Female
Humans
Male
Random Allocation
Reaction Time
Visual Perception
Online AccessGet more information

Cover

More Information
Summary:It is widely reported that a picture of an angry face seems to figuratively pop out of an array of happy faces, although all of these reports are based on a single experiment by Hansen and Hansen. Pop out, when it occurs, indicates that an observer has located the target by means of a preattentive, parallel search. Hansen and Hansen concluded that it was the affect displayed by the face which caused it to pop out from its surrounding distracters. However, Hansen and Hansen's angry faces contained extraneous dark areas which were introduced when they transformed Ekman and Friesen's photographs of angry and happy faces into black-on-white sketches. When the original artifact-free gray-scaled versions of angry and happy faces were used no evidence for pop out was found. All target faces were found during a serial, self-terminating search regardless of their expression. The angry face in Hansen and Hansen's experiments may have popped out from a crowd of happy faces because of a contrast artifact inadvertently introduced when they created their stimuli.
ISSN:0301-0066
DOI:10.1068/p251091