Fast and involuntary reactions to the social message signaled by emotional faces. The role of moderating variables

对情绪面孔所传达的社交信息做出快速且不自觉的反应。

• 批准号: 265677242
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Dirk Wentura
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine Psychologie und Methodenlehre
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/265677242?language=en
• 关键词: Fast; involuntary; reactions; social; message

This project aims to test which process drives fast and involuntary reactions to emotional facial expressions. A prevailing hypothesis is that positive expressions automatically always elicit a positive evaluative response (e.g., approach) whereas negative expressions automatically always elicit a negative evaluative response (e.g., avoidance). In contrast, we hypothesized that responses can also be triggered by the social message signaled by an emotional expression. For example, the happy expression shown by a member of an in-group might immediately be seen as expressing a friendly wish for affiliation and elicit a positive reaction, whereas the same expression might be immediately taken as a sign of arrogance or Schadenfreude if shown by a member of a negatively evaluated out-group and elicit a negative reaction. We found evidence for this social message hypothesis with different dependent variables in the first funding period: In the approach/avoidance paradigm, fear and happiness expressed by in-group members elicited concordant behavior (i.e, happy-approach and fear-avoidance produced faster responses than the reversed assignment), whereas emotions expressed by out-group members elicited a reversed pattern. We found the same pattern with the startle reflex paradigm and we showed that reactions to expressions of anger are influenced by the physical strength of the opponent. However, our findings also showed boundary conditions of the social message hypothesis: We found that the contrast emotion employed in the approach/avoidance task influences which process drives the reactions such that the same expression (i.e., anger) produced an avoidance reaction if paired with happiness but an approach reaction if paired with fear. We interpreted this pattern as valence-based responses versus social message-based responses. We also found unexpected limitations: The emotion x group interaction was not found in the evaluative priming task. Thus, on the basis of the first funding phase, we can conclude that fast and unintentional reactions to emotional expressions are influenced by their respective social message only under specific conditions. Thus, it is important to examine the circumstances under which reactions are triggered by which aspect. This is the goal of the second funding period. We thereby hypothesize that it is the default to react to the (nominal) valence of an emotional expression since this is the most salient feature. However, in situations in which the social message is especially relevant for the perceiver, it is more adaptive to react to the social message of the expression. We propose that relevance of the social message signaled by the emotional expression is established if two prerequisites are fulfilled: the emotion expression is task-relevant for the perceiver (“task-relevance”) and context cues which point to the informative value of the social message signaled by the expression for the perceiver are present (“context cues”).

这个项目旨在测试是什么过程驱动了对情绪面部表情的快速和非自愿的反应。一种流行的假设是，积极的表达总是自动地引起积极的评价反应(例如，接近)，而消极的表达总是自动地引起消极的评价反应(例如，回避)。相反，我们假设，情绪表达所传递的社交信息也会触发反应。例如，组内成员表现出的高兴表情可能立即被视为表达了想要加入的友好愿望并引起积极反应，而同样的表情如果被负面评价的组外组成员表现出来并引起负面反应，则可能立即被视为傲慢或幸灾乐祸的迹象。我们在第一个资助阶段发现了不同因变量的社会信息假说的证据：在接近/回避范式中，组内成员表达的恐惧和快乐引发了协调的行为(即，快乐接近和恐惧回避比反向分配产生了更快的反应)，而组外成员表达的情绪则引发了相反的模式。我们发现了与惊吓反射范式相同的模式，我们发现，对愤怒表达的反应受到对手体力的影响。然而，我们的发现也显示了社交信息假设的边界条件：我们发现，接近/回避任务中使用的对比情绪影响着驱动反应的过程，使得相同的表情(即愤怒)在与快乐配对时产生回避反应，而如果与恐惧配对则产生接近反应。我们将这种模式解释为基于价位的反应与基于社交信息的反应。我们还发现了意想不到的局限性：在评价性启动任务中没有发现情绪x群体交互作用。因此，在第一个资助阶段的基础上，我们可以得出结论，情绪表达的快速和无意反应只有在特定条件下才会受到各自的社会信息的影响。因此，重要的是要研究由哪个方面触发反应的情况。这是第二个资助期的目标。因此，我们假设，对情绪表达的(名义)价位做出反应是默认的，因为这是最显著的特征。然而，在社交信息与接受者特别相关的情况下，它更适合于对表达的社交信息做出反应。我们认为，如果满足两个前提条件：情感表达对接受者来说是任务相关的(“任务-相关性”)，并且存在指向由该表达向接受者传递的社会消息的信息价值的语境线索(“语境线索”)，则情感表达所传递的社会消息的相关性被建立。