Influence of violent contexts on facial reactions elicited by angry and neutral faces

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on determining whether violent contexts influence the perception of aggressiveness in faces analysing spontaneous corrugator supercilii activity. Participants viewed pictures of neutral and angry faces preceded by a contextual sentence describing either violent or neutral actions. They were instructed to judge each face according to whether it was aggressive or non-aggressive. Results show a higher level of perceived aggressiveness for neutral faces preceded by violent contexts, accompanied by longer reaction times, and a significant increase of corrugator activity. Angry faces preceded by neutral contexts were judged as less aggressive and elicited less corrugator activity. In conclusion, our results provide evidence that facial reactions and aggressiveness judgment for faces are context-dependent. With this work, we contribute to the view that contextual cues guide the face’s emotional meaning, under top-down processing.

KEYWORDS:

• Neutral faces
• angry faces
• contextual influence
• corrugator activity
• perceived aggressiveness

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (CONICYT) under Grants FONDECYT#11190245 to Nerea Aldunate, and FONDECYT#1200326 to Germán Gálvez-García. The work was also supported by Dirección de Investigación de la Vicerrectoría de Investigación (VRI) de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, under grant “Concurso Inicio 2018” to Nerea Aldunate.