Springer Utaka S, Rosas Alexandra, McGetrick John, Bowers Dawn
Department of Clinical & Health Psychology, University of Florida Health Science Center, Gainesville, FL 32610, USA.
Emotion. 2007 Aug;7(3):516-25. doi: 10.1037/1528-3542.7.3.516.
Emotion researchers often categorize angry and fearful face stimuli as "negative" or "threatening". Perception of fear and anger, however, appears to be mediated by dissociable neural circuitries and often elicit distinguishable behavioral responses. The authors sought to elucidate whether viewing anger and fear expressions produce dissociable psychophysiological responses (i.e., the startle reflex). The results of two experiments using different facial stimulus sets (representing anger, fear, neutral, and happy) indicated that viewing anger was associated with a significantly heightened startle response (p < .05) relative to viewing fear, happy, and neutral. This finding suggests that while anger and fear faces convey messages of "threat", their priming effect on startle circuitry differs. Thus, angry expressions, representing viewer-directed threat with an unambiguous source (i.e., the expresser), may more effectively induce a motivational propensity to withdraw or escape. The source of threat is comparatively less clear for fearful faces. The differential effects of these two facial threat signals on the defensive motivational system adds to growing literature highlighting the importance of distinguishing between emotional stimuli of similar valence, along lines of meaning and functional impact.
情绪研究者通常将愤怒和恐惧的面部刺激归类为“负面”或“威胁性”。然而，对恐惧和愤怒的感知似乎是由可分离的神经回路介导的，并且常常引发可区分的行为反应。作者试图阐明观看愤怒和恐惧表情是否会产生可分离的心理生理反应（即惊吓反射）。两项使用不同面部刺激集（代表愤怒、恐惧、中性和快乐）的实验结果表明，与观看恐惧、快乐和中性表情相比，观看愤怒表情与明显增强的惊吓反应相关（p < .05）。这一发现表明，虽然愤怒和恐惧的面孔都传达“威胁”信息，但它们对惊吓回路的启动效应有所不同。因此，代表有明确来源（即表达者）的针对观看者的威胁的愤怒表情，可能更有效地诱发退缩或逃避的动机倾向。恐惧面孔的威胁来源相对不那么明确。这两种面部威胁信号对防御动机系统的不同影响，进一步丰富了相关文献，强调了根据意义和功能影响区分相似效价情绪刺激的重要性。
