Department of Clinical, Educational, and Health Psychology, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London, UK.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2012 Nov;141(4):715-27. doi: 10.1037/a0027950. Epub 2012 Apr 2.
It has been proposed that two major axes, dominance and trustworthiness, characterize the social dimensions of face evaluation. Whether evaluation of faces on these social dimensions is restricted to conscious appraisal or happens at a preconscious level is unknown. Here we provide behavioral evidence that such preconscious evaluations exist and that they are likely to be interpretations arising from interactions between the face stimuli and observer-specific traits. Monocularly viewed faces that varied independently along two social dimensions of trust and dominance were rendered invisible by continuous flash suppression (CFS) when a flashing pattern was presented to the other eye. Participants pressed a button as soon as they saw the face emerge from suppression to indicate whether the previously hidden face was located slightly to the left or right of central fixation. Dominant and untrustworthy faces took significantly longer time to emerge (T2E) compared with neutral faces. A control experiment showed these findings could not reflect delayed motor responses to conscious faces. Finally, we showed that participants' self-reported propensity to trust was strongly predictive of untrust avoidance (i.e., difference in T2E for untrustworthy vs neutral faces) as well as dominance avoidance (i.e., difference in T2E for dominant vs neutral faces). Dominance avoidance was also correlated with submissive behavior. We suggest that such prolongation of suppression for threatening faces may result from a passive fear response, leading to slowed visual perception.
有人提出，主导性和可信度这两个主要维度可以描述面部评价的社会维度。对于这些社会维度上的面孔评价是否仅限于有意识的评价，或者是否发生在潜意识水平，目前还不得而知。在这里，我们提供了行为证据，证明这种潜意识评价是存在的，而且它们很可能是由面孔刺激与观察者特定特征之间的相互作用产生的解释。当向另一只眼睛呈现闪烁图案时，通过连续闪烁抑制（CFS）使单眼观看的面孔在两个信任和主导性的社会维度上独立变化时变得不可见。当参与者看到面孔从抑制中出现时，他们会按下按钮，以指示之前隐藏的面孔是位于中央注视点的稍左还是稍右。与中性面孔相比，主导性和不可信的面孔需要更长的时间（T2E）才能出现。对照实验表明，这些发现不能反映出对有意识面孔的延迟运动反应。最后，我们表明，参与者报告的信任倾向强烈预测了不可信回避（即不可信面孔与中性面孔之间的 T2E 差异）以及主导性回避（即主导性面孔与中性面孔之间的 T2E 差异）。主导性回避也与顺从行为相关。我们认为，对于威胁面孔的这种抑制延长可能是由于被动的恐惧反应，导致视觉感知速度减慢。
