Face to face with emotion: holistic face processing is modulated by emotional state.

Negative emotions are linked with a local, rather than global, visual processing style, which may preferentially facilitate feature-based, relative to holistic, processing mechanisms. Because faces are typically processed holistically, and because social contexts are prime elicitors of emotions, we examined whether negative emotions decrease holistic processing of faces. We induced positive, negative, or neutral emotions via film clips and measured holistic processing before and after the induction: participants made judgements about cued parts of chimeric faces, and holistic processing was indexed by the interference caused by task-irrelevant face parts. Emotional state significantly modulated face-processing style, with the negative emotion induction leading to decreased holistic processing. Furthermore, self-reported change in emotional state correlated with changes in holistic processing. These results contrast with general assumptions that holistic processing of faces is automatic and immune to outside influences, and they illustrate emotion's power to modulate socially relevant aspects of visual perception.

Smile to see the forest: Facially expressed positive emotions broaden cognition.

The broaden hypothesis, part of Fredrickson's (1998, 2001) broaden-and-build theory, proposes that positive emotions lead to broadened cognitive states. Here, we present evidence that cognitive broadening can be produced by frequent facial expressions of positive emotion. Additionally, we present a novel method of using facial electromyography (EMG) to discriminate between Duchenne (genuine) and non-Duchenne (non-genuine) smiles. Across experiments, Duchenne smiles occurred more frequently during positive emotion inductions than neutral or negative inductions. Across experiments, Duchenne smiles correlated with self-reports of specific positive emotions. In Experiment 1, high frequencies of Duchenne smiles predicted increased attentional breadth on a global-local visual processing task. In Experiment 2, high frequencies of Duchenne smiles predicted increased attentional flexibility on a covert attentional orienting task. These data underscore the value of using multiple methods to measure emotional experience in studies of emotion and cognition.

Measuring appetitive responding with the postauricular reflex.

Recent research has provided evidence that the postauricular reflex (PAR) is potentiated while people view pleasant images relative to unpleasant and neutral images. The present study sought to extend these findings by investigating whether the PAR is more robustly modulated by the appetitive salience of the stimuli. Eyeblink startle and PAR responses of 51 participants were recorded while they viewed images that varied in valence and thematic content. Participants displayed significantly greater mean PAR magnitude during appetitive-related images (e.g., food, erotica, families) compared with non-appetitive-related pleasant images. These findings support the contention that the PAR is a useful tool for measuring appetitive responding in humans.

"We all look the same to me": positive emotions eliminate the own-race in face recognition.

Extrapolating from the broaden-and-build theory, we hypothesized that positive emotion may reduce the own-race bias in facial recognition. In Experiments 1 and 2, Caucasian participants (N = 89) viewed Black and White faces for a recognition task. They viewed videos eliciting joy, fear, or neutrality before the learning (Experiment 1) or testing (Experiment 2) stages of the task. Results reliably supported the hypothesis. Relative to fear or a neutral state, joy experienced before either stage improved recognition of Black faces and significantly reduced the own-race bias. Discussion centers on possible mechanisms for this reduction of the own-race bias, including improvements in holistic processing and promotion of a common in-group identity due to positive emotions.