Differential effects of emotional expressions and scenes on visual search

• Published in: Motivation and emotion 2015-08, Vol.39 (4), p.589-601
• Main Authors: Olatunji, Bunmi O., Armstrong, Thomas, Ciesielski, Bethany G.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Behavioral Science and Psychology; Brain research; Clinical Psychology; Emotions; Hypotheses; Original Paper; Personality and Social Psychology; Psychology; Threats
• ISSN: 0146-7239; 1573-6644
• DOI: 10.1007/s11031-015-9477-y

Although research has shown that emotional content modulates attention, such studies often differ in the types of stimuli used to evoke emotions. Some studies utilize emotionally valenced scenes and others utilize emotional facial expressions. Importantly, the comparability of the effect of these two stimulus classes on attention is unclear. In the present experiments, we contrasted the effects of emotional scenes and facial expressions with the same valence on visual search speed. Overall, scenes caused greater disruption in visual search than faces, and emotional content appeared to modulate this effect with larger differences between scenes and faces arising for more negatively valenced stimuli. This pattern of findings was largely replicated after varying task difficulty in Study 2 and the visual properties of the search array and task difficulty in Study 3. These findings indicate that emotional scenes and faces produce differential effects on attention, and suggest that negative emotional scenes are particularly potent in disrupting the allocation of attention.