A happy face advantage has consistently been shown in emotion categorization tasks; happy faces are categorized as happy faster than angry faces as angry. Furthermore, social category cues, such as facial sex and race, moderate the happy face advantage in evaluatively congruent ways with a larger happy face advantage for more positively evaluated faces. We investigated whether attractiveness, a facial attribute unrelated to more defined social categories, would moderate the happy face advantage consistent with the evaluative congruence account. A larger happy face advantage for the more positively evaluated attractive faces than for unattractive faces was predicted. Across 4 experiments participants categorized attractive and unattractive faces as happy or angry as quickly and accurately as possible. As predicted, when female faces were categorized separately, a happy face advantage emerged for the attractive females but not for the unattractive females. Corresponding results were only found in the error rates for male faces. This pattern was confirmed when female and male faces were categorized together, indicating that attractiveness may have a stronger influence on emotion perception for female faces. Attractiveness is shown to moderate emotion perception in line with the evaluative congruence account and is suggested to have a stronger influence on emotion perception than facial sex cues in contexts where attractiveness is a salient evaluative dimension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Previous research has demonstrated that facial social category cues influence emotion perception such that happy expressions are categorized faster than negative expressions on faces belonging to positively evaluated social groups. We examined whether character information that is experimentally manipulated can also influence emotion perception. Across two experiments, participants learned to associate individuals posing neutral expressions with positive or negative acts. In a subsequent task, participants categorized happy and angry expressions of these same individuals as quickly and accurately as possible. As predicted, a larger happy face advantage emerged for individuals associated with positive character information than for individuals associated with negative character information. These results demonstrate that experimentally manipulated evaluations of an individual's character are available quickly and affect early stages of face processing. Emotion perception is not only influenced by preexisting attitudes based on facial attributes, but also by information about a person that has been recently acquired.

Objective Strong bodily responses have repeatedly been shown in participants fearful of spiders and snakes when they see pictures of the feared animal. In this study, we investigate if these fear responses affect voice intensity, require awareness of the pictorial stimuli, and whether the responses run their course once initiated. Method Animal fearful participants responded to arrowhead‐shaped probes superimposed on animal pictures (snake, spider, or rabbit), presented either backwardly masked or with no masking. Their task was to say ‘up’ or ‘down’ as quickly as possible depending on the orientation of the arrowhead. Arrowhead probes were presented at two different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA), 261 or 561-ms after picture onset. In addition to vocal responses, electrocardiogram, and skin conductance (SC) were recorded. Results No fear‐specific effects emerged to masked stimuli, thereby providing no support for the notion that fear responses can be triggered by stimuli presented outside awareness. For the unmasked pictures, voice intensity was stronger and SC response amplitude was larger to probes superimposed on the feared animal than other animals, at both SOAs. Heart rate changes were greater during exposure to feared animals when probed at 561-ms, but not at 261-ms, which indicates that a fear response can change its course after initiation. Conclusion Exposure to pictures of the feared animal increased voice intensity. No support was found for responses without awareness. Observed effects on heart rate may be due to change in parasympathetic activation during fear response.

Human fear is important in wildlife management, but self-reported fear provides only partial information about fear reactions. Thus, eye movements, skin conductance, and changes in heart rate were assessed during picture viewing, visual search, and implicit evaluation tasks. Pictures of bears, wolves, moose, and hares were presented to participants who self-reported as fearful of bears (n = 8), fearful of bears and wolves (n = 15), or not fearful of bears or wolves (n = 14). The feared animal was expected to elicit strong physiological responses, be dwelled upon, and be associated with negative words. Independent of fearfulness, bear pictures elicited the strongest physiological responses, and wolf pictures showed the strongest negative associations. The bear-fearful group showed stronger physiological responses to bears. The bear- and wolf-fearful group showed more difficulty in associating bears with good words. Presence of a feared animal in the search task, resulted in prolonged response time.

To investigate whether fear affects the strength with which responses are made, 12 animal-fearful individuals (five snake fearful and seven spider fearful) were instructed to decide as quickly as possible whether an animal target from a deviant category was present in a 3 × 4 item (animal) search array. The animal categories were snakes, spiders, and cats. Response force was measured, in newtons. The results showed that the strength of the response was greater when the feared animal served as the target than when it served as the distractors. This finding was corroborated by evoked heart rate changes to the stimuli. Our findings strengthen the argument that focused attention on a single, feared animal can lead to increases in manual force.