Perceiving emotions: Cueing social categorization processes and attentional control through facial expressions.
Cogn Emot
; 30(6): 1149-63, 2016 09.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-26197208
ABSTRACT
Individuals spontaneously categorise other people on the basis of their gender, ethnicity and age. But what about the emotions they express? In two studies we tested the hypothesis that facial expressions are similar to other social categories in that they can function as contextual cues to control attention. In Experiment 1 we associated expressions of anger and happiness with specific proportions of congruent/incongruent flanker trials. We also created consistent and inconsistent category members within each of these two general contexts. The results demonstrated that participants exhibited a larger congruency effect when presented with faces in the emotional group associated with a high proportion of congruent trials. Notably, this effect transferred to inconsistent members of the group. In Experiment 2 we replicated the effects with faces depicting true and false smiles. Together these findings provide consistent evidence that individuals spontaneously utilise emotions to categorise others and that such categories determine the allocation of attentional control.
Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Atenção
/
Percepção Social
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Sinais (Psicologia)
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Emoções
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Expressão Facial
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Processos Mentais
Limite:
Adult
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Female
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Humans
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Male
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2016
Tipo de documento:
Article