Threatening Facial Expressions Impact Goal-Directed Actions Only if Task-Relevant
Facial emotional expressions are a salient source of information for nonverbal social interactions. However, their impact on action planning and execution is highly controversial. In this vein, the effect of the two threatening facial expressions, i.e., angry and fearful faces, is still unclear. Fre...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2020-10-01
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| Series: | Brain Sciences |
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| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/10/11/794 |
| _version_ | 1797549369876021248 |
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| author | Christian Mancini Luca Falciati Claudio Maioli Giovanni Mirabella |
| author_facet | Christian Mancini Luca Falciati Claudio Maioli Giovanni Mirabella |
| author_sort | Christian Mancini |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Facial emotional expressions are a salient source of information for nonverbal social interactions. However, their impact on action planning and execution is highly controversial. In this vein, the effect of the two threatening facial expressions, i.e., angry and fearful faces, is still unclear. Frequently, fear and anger are used interchangeably as negative emotions. However, they convey different social signals. Unlike fear, anger indicates a direct threat toward the observer. To provide new evidence on this issue, we exploited a novel design based on two versions of a Go/No-go task. In the emotional version, healthy participants had to perform the same movement for pictures of fearful, angry, or happy faces and withhold it when neutral expressions were presented. The same pictures were shown in the control version, but participants had to move or suppress the movement, according to the actor’s gender. This experimental design allows us to test task relevance’s impact on emotional stimuli without conflating movement planning with target detection and task switching. We found that the emotional content of faces interferes with actions only when task-relevant, i.e., the effect of emotions is context-dependent. We also showed that angry faces qualitatively had the same effect as fearful faces, i.e., both negative emotions decreased response readiness with respect to happy expressions. However, anger has a much greater impact than fear, as it increases both the rates of mistakes and the time of movement execution. We interpreted these results, suggesting that participants have to exploit more cognitive resources to appraise threatening than positive facial expressions, and angry than fearful faces before acting. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-10T15:14:41Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-3c1bdf77700449159b5385168891745a |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2076-3425 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-10T15:14:41Z |
| publishDate | 2020-10-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Brain Sciences |
| spelling | doaj.art-3c1bdf77700449159b5385168891745a2023-11-20T19:03:21ZengMDPI AGBrain Sciences2076-34252020-10-01101179410.3390/brainsci10110794Threatening Facial Expressions Impact Goal-Directed Actions Only if Task-RelevantChristian Mancini0Luca Falciati1Claudio Maioli2Giovanni Mirabella3Department of Clinical and Experimental Sciences, University of Brescia, Viale Europa 11, 25123 Brescia (BS), ItalyDepartment of Clinical and Experimental Sciences, University of Brescia, Viale Europa 11, 25123 Brescia (BS), ItalyDepartment of Clinical and Experimental Sciences, University of Brescia, Viale Europa 11, 25123 Brescia (BS), ItalyDepartment of Clinical and Experimental Sciences, University of Brescia, Viale Europa 11, 25123 Brescia (BS), ItalyFacial emotional expressions are a salient source of information for nonverbal social interactions. However, their impact on action planning and execution is highly controversial. In this vein, the effect of the two threatening facial expressions, i.e., angry and fearful faces, is still unclear. Frequently, fear and anger are used interchangeably as negative emotions. However, they convey different social signals. Unlike fear, anger indicates a direct threat toward the observer. To provide new evidence on this issue, we exploited a novel design based on two versions of a Go/No-go task. In the emotional version, healthy participants had to perform the same movement for pictures of fearful, angry, or happy faces and withhold it when neutral expressions were presented. The same pictures were shown in the control version, but participants had to move or suppress the movement, according to the actor’s gender. This experimental design allows us to test task relevance’s impact on emotional stimuli without conflating movement planning with target detection and task switching. We found that the emotional content of faces interferes with actions only when task-relevant, i.e., the effect of emotions is context-dependent. We also showed that angry faces qualitatively had the same effect as fearful faces, i.e., both negative emotions decreased response readiness with respect to happy expressions. However, anger has a much greater impact than fear, as it increases both the rates of mistakes and the time of movement execution. We interpreted these results, suggesting that participants have to exploit more cognitive resources to appraise threatening than positive facial expressions, and angry than fearful faces before acting.https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/10/11/794motor readinessemotionfacial expressionsdecision makingGo/No-go task |
| spellingShingle | Christian Mancini Luca Falciati Claudio Maioli Giovanni Mirabella Threatening Facial Expressions Impact Goal-Directed Actions Only if Task-Relevant Brain Sciences motor readiness emotion facial expressions decision making Go/No-go task |
| title | Threatening Facial Expressions Impact Goal-Directed Actions Only if Task-Relevant |
| title_full | Threatening Facial Expressions Impact Goal-Directed Actions Only if Task-Relevant |
| title_fullStr | Threatening Facial Expressions Impact Goal-Directed Actions Only if Task-Relevant |
| title_full_unstemmed | Threatening Facial Expressions Impact Goal-Directed Actions Only if Task-Relevant |
| title_short | Threatening Facial Expressions Impact Goal-Directed Actions Only if Task-Relevant |
| title_sort | threatening facial expressions impact goal directed actions only if task relevant |
| topic | motor readiness emotion facial expressions decision making Go/No-go task |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/10/11/794 |
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