Visual search for schematic emotional faces: Angry faces are more than crosses

Abstract

Recent studies of the face in the crowd effect, the faster detection of angry than of happy faces in visual search, suggest that for schematic faces it reflects on perceptual features like inward pointing lines rather than on emotional expressions. Removing a potential confound, Experiments 1–2 replicate the preferential detection of stimuli with inward pointing lines, but Experiment 2a indicates that a surrounding circle is required for the effect to emerge. Experiments 3–7 failed to find evidence for faster detection of schematic faces comprising only the elements critical for the faster detection of angry faces according to a low level visual feature account, inward tilted brows and upturned mouth. Faster detection of anger was evident if eyes or eyes and noses were added, but only if their placement was consistent with the first order relations among these elements in a human face. Drawing the critical elements in thicker, higher contrast lines also led to an anger advantage, but this was smaller than that seen for the complete faces. The present results suggest that, while able to support faster target detection, a prevalence of inward pointing lines is not sufficient to explain the detection advantage of angry schematic faces.

Keywords:

• Face in the crowd effect
• Anger superiority effect
• Visual search
• Schematic faces

We are grateful to Dr Coelho for permission to use his stimuli and to Ms Jenna Scambler and Ms Mylyn Dat for assistance with data collection.

We are grateful to Dr Coelho for permission to use his stimuli and to Ms Jenna Scambler and Ms Mylyn Dat for assistance with data collection.

Notes

¹ We thank Dr Coelho for access to the stimuli.

² We would like to thank two reviewers for pointing this out to us.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Grant DP110100460 from the Australian Research Council.