Not all emotions are equal:Fear chemosignals lower awareness thresholds only for fearful faces
| Autor: | Nuno Gomes, Fábio M. Silva, Sebastian Korb, Gün R. Semin |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
Adult
Visual perception Adolescent genetic structures Chemosignals Physiology media_common.quotation_subject Emotions Facial Muscles 050105 experimental psychology Visual processing Young Adult 03 medical and health sciences Behavioral Neuroscience 0302 clinical medicine Physiology (medical) Reaction Time Humans Contrast (vision) Continuous flash suppression 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences media_common Facial expression Electromyography 05 social sciences Fear Visual awareness Sensory Systems Disgust Continuous Flash Suppression Smell Odor Sensory Thresholds Female Visual Awareness Psychology Photic Stimulation 030217 neurology & neurosurgery psychological phenomena and processes Cognitive psychology |
| Zdroj: | Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (RCAAP) instacron:RCAAP Chemical Senses |
| Popis: | Exposure to body odors (chemosignals) collected under different emotional states (i.e., emotional chemosignals) can modulate our visual system, biasing visual perception. Recent research has suggested that exposure to fear body odors, results in a generalized faster access to visual awareness of different emotional facial expressions (i.e., fear, happy, and neutral). In the present study, we aimed at replicating and extending these findings by exploring if these effects are limited to fear odor, by introducing a second negative body odor—that is, disgust. We compared the time that 3 different emotional facial expressions (i.e., fear, disgust, and neutral) took to reach visual awareness, during a breaking continuous flash suppression paradigm, across 3 body odor conditions (i.e., fear, disgust, and neutral). We found that fear body odors do not trigger an overall faster access to visual awareness, but instead sped-up access to awareness specifically for facial expressions of fear. Disgust odor, on the other hand, had no effects on awareness thresholds of facial expressions. These findings contrast with prior results, suggesting that the potential of fear body odors to induce visual processing adjustments is specific to fear cues. Furthermore, our results support a unique ability of fear body odors in inducing such visual processing changes, compared with other negative emotional chemosignals (i.e., disgust). These conclusions raise interesting questions as to how fear odor might interact with the visual processing stream, whilst simultaneously giving rise to future avenues of research. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
|