Decomposing valence intensity effects in disgusting and fearful stimuli: an event-related potential study

ABSTRACT

We are sensitive to valence intensity in negative emotional stimuli, but not in positive emotional stimuli, a phenomenon known as the valence intensity effect. However, whether this valence intensity effect is processed similarly within different negative stimuli, e.g., fear-inducing and disgust-inducing, remains unclear. In the present study, we investigated whether the valence intensity effects for fearful and disgusting stimuli were perceived in a unique way by using event-related potentials (ERPs). Electroencephalogram was recorded from 22 participants as they performed a standard/deviant categorization task using extremely disgusting pictures, moderately disgusting pictures, extremely fearful pictures, moderately fearful pictures, and neutral pictures. The ERP analysis revealed that the extremely fearful stimuli elicited a larger amplitude N2 than moderately fearful stimuli, whereas the extremely disgusting stimuli elicited a smaller amplitude late positive component than moderately disgusting stimuli. This study is the first to provide evidence that fear and disgust may have different valence intensity effects, which was revealed at early attention allocation stages for fearful stimuli and at late emotional evaluation stages for disgusting stimuli.

KEYWORDS:

• Disgusting stimuli
• fearful stimuli
• event-related potential (ERP)
• valence intensity effect

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant numbers 31571151, 31500913 and 81171289]; the Graduate Education Innovation Project of Shanghai University of Sport [grant number yjscx2015021]; and Shanghai University Top Discipline Construction Plans.