Looking for Foes and Friends: Perceptual and Emotional Factors When Finding a Face in the Crowd.

TLDR

The authors conducted three visual‑search experiments with photographically reproduced happy, angry, and fearful faces among neutral distractors, and a facial‑emotion recognition task indicating that the happy‑face advantage may arise from easier processing. Happy faces were detected faster and more accurately than angry or fearful faces, whereas angry faces outperformed happy ones only with perceptually controlled schematic stimuli and among highly socially anxious participants when fear was experimentally heightened; social anxiety had no overall effect.

Abstract

In a face-in-the-crowd setting, the authors examined visual search for photographically reproduced happy, angry, and fearful target faces among neutral distractor faces in 3 separate experiments. Contrary to the hypothesis, happy targets were consistently detected more quickly and accurately than angry and fearful targets, as were directed compared with averted targets. There was no consistent effect of social anxiety. A facial emotion recognition experiment suggested that the happy search advantage could be due to the ease of processing happy faces. In the final experiment with perceptually controlled schematic faces, the authors reported more effective detection of angry than happy faces. This angry advantage was most obvious for highly socially anxious individuals when their social fear was experimentally enhanced.