Is There Any Evidence That Some Emotions Expressed in the Face Can Be Detected Faster Than Others? Discuss This with Relation to Empirical Studies.

Is there any evidence that some emotions expressed in the face can be detected faster than others? Discuss this with relation to empirical studies.

Face perception is one of the most developed visual perceptual skill in humans. Most humans spend more of their time looking at faces than at any other object, this is because faces have priority for detection. Facial expressions allow communication and are produced when there’s an emotional stimulus and audience present. The ability to recognise emotion expressions appears early, for example at 7 months a child can distinguish among expressions of fear, anger, happiness and misery. However, angry faces are detected  faster than faces depicting non – threatening expressions, Öhman (1999) suggested it is evolutionarily adaptive for humans to detect threat instantly and automatically (Quinlan & Dyson, 2008). Attention is driven by fear, and it’s this fear system that combines defence mechanism and emotional reactions for dealing with threatening situations, therefore visual threat-related stimuli such as angry faces are detected faster than non-threatening stimuli (Quinlan & Dyson, 2008).    

Firstly, a study which supports that some emotions expressed in the face can be detected quicker than others was Hansen & Hansen (1988). In their first experiment participants looked at 3x3 grid of 9 different faces. There were 54 trials, in the trials faces either showed the same or one discrepant emotion. Participants responded same/different by pressing relevant keys. Emotions shown were either angry, happy or neutral (Hansen & Hansen, 1988). Results showed it was quicker to detect an angry face in a happy and neutral crowd compared with finding a happy face in an angry or neutral crowd, this pattern of data suggests there’s an anger superiority effect. This supports the idea that humans have adapted to detect threatening expressions much quicker. However they also found discrepant neutral face was fast to detect in a happy crowd with no adequate explanation. Hansen and Hansen (1988) conducted a second experiment, participants were shown crowds of 4 faces all of them containing one discrepant face, however briefly and then masked with scrambled letters. In one condition there was an angry face in happy crowd & in another a happy face in an angry crowd. But this time all faces were the same person, the discrepant face were located in 1 of the 4 quadrants and participants had to detect where the discrepant face was (Hansen & Hansen, 1988). Results showed it took less time to locate the angry face in happy distractors than to locate the happy face in angry distractors. These results indicate angry/threatening faces ‘pop out’ in crowds of happy faces, further supporting the original idea that a discrepant angry face grabs attention.

However studies have challenged the ‘face in the crowd’ effect for example Purcell, Stewart and Skov (1996) couldn’t replicate Hansen and Hansen’s (1988) results using the search task. They concluded that detection of angry faces was a result of visual artefact of stimuli, for example dark patches on angry faces, confounding the interpretation of the data which could have caused angry faces to be detected efficiently (Quinlan & Dyson, 2008). This led Fox (2000) to conduct an experiment which was similar to Hansen and Hansen (1988) experiment. Participants were presented with 4 randomly positioned schematic faces, the discrepant face was either angry/happy (an angry face in a happy or neutral crowd or a happy face in an angry or neutral crowd). Participants responded same or different by pressing keys (Quinlan & Dyson, 2008). Results showed that time to search through an angry crowd was slow compared to time to search through happy/neutral faces, this shows there’s something about angry facial expressions that disrupts search process, from this Fox (2000) stated “anger tends to hold visual attention”. Lastly performance in this experiment was examined, it was found that angry faces was detected fast in neutral crowd despite display duration (Quinlan & Dyson, 2008).

Another study which provides evidence that anger is detected faster was Eastwood, Smilek and Merikle (2001), participants were presented to a crowd consisting of randomly positioned neutral faces and displays which, varied from 7 -19 search elements. Participants had to show location of the target (Quinlan & Dyson, 2008). They found responses of 13 ms/search element when an angry face was the target and 20 ms/search element when a happy face was the target. These results provide support for the anger superior effect because it highlights detection of threatening facial expressions in a crowd can be done quickly. This was repeated but this time Eastwood et.al (2001) used inverted faces, results showed no change, but found the angry superior effect when the target faces were upright, this indicates there’s more to the effect than just differentiating one curve from another.

There are some limitations with Eastwood et.al (2001) experiment, sample only consisted of students, this may make it hard to generalise results to older people. However Ruffman and Jenkin (2009), studied age differences in speed of finding emotion faces, participants were presented with 9 faces ( real and schematic) where faces were identical (neutral emotion) or with one discrepant face (angry/happy) (Ruffman, Ng & Jenkin, 2009). They found young and older adults were able to detect a discrepant face expressing anger faster than when a happy face was expressed. This suggest there’s no age differences in finding angry faces.  

Despite this, there’s been some evidence that emotions such as anger aren’t detected faster, for example Juth et.al (2005). They presented participants with displays containing 8 colour photographic images of faces of different individuals. Additionally, the orientation and angles in faces varied so each face can be looking directly at the viewer or looking away from the viewer (Quinlan & Dyson, 2008). This increased ecological validity of study as this created a more realistic situation as humans take in emotions at different angles, the orientation is useful because we can test if the angry superior effect works even if angry face is looking directly at participant. Results showed it was happy faces that stood out, suggesting the angry superior effect isn’t as precise as it first seemed.