Search Asymmetries With Real Faces

Testing the Anger-Superiority Effect

Horstmann, Gernot
Bauland, Andrea

¹Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany.

²Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Gernot Horstmann, Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, POB 100 131, 33 501, Bielefeld, Germany. E-mail: [email protected].

We are indebted to Lily-Maria Silny for her assistance in manuscript preparation, and to Christine Broermann, Wulf-Uwe Meyer, and 3 anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.

Received Date: February 17, 2005;Revised Date: October 14, 2005;Accepted Date: October 17, 2005

Emotion 6(2):p 193-207, May 2006.

The anger-superiority hypothesis states that angry faces are detected more efficiently than friendly faces. Previously research used schematized stimuli, which minimizes perceptual confounds, but violates ecological validity. The authors argue that a confounding of appearance and meaning is unavoidable and even unproblematic if real faces are presented. Four experiments tested carefully controlled photos in a search-asymmetry design. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed more efficient detection of an angry face among happy faces than vice versa. Experiment 3 indicated that the advantage was due to the mouth, but not to the eyes, and Experiment 4, using upright and inverted thatcherized faces, suggests a perceptual basis. The results are in line with a sensory-bias hypothesis that facial expressions evolved to exploit extant capabilities of the visual system.