Kikutani Mariko
Faculty of Psychology, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2018 Apr;71(4):870-878. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2017.1307431. Epub 2018 Jan 1.
The reported experiment investigated memory of unfamiliar faces and how it is influenced by race, facial expression, direction of gaze and observers' level of social anxiety. In total, 87 Japanese participants initially memorized images of Oriental and Caucasian faces displaying either happy or angry expressions with direct or averted gaze. They then saw the previously seen faces and additional distractor faces displaying neutral expressions and judged whether they had seen them before. Their level of social anxiety was measured with a questionnaire. Regardless of gaze or race of the faces, recognition for faces studied with happy expressions was more accurate than for those studied with angry expressions (happiness advantage), but this tendency weakened for people with higher levels of social anxiety, possibly due to their increased anxiety for positive feedback regarding social interactions. Interestingly, the reduction in the happiness advantage observed for the highly anxious participants was more prominent for the own-race faces than for the other-race faces. The results suggest that angry expression disrupts processing of identity-relevant features of the faces, but the memory for happy faces is affected by the social anxiety traits, and the magnitude of the impact may depend on the importance of the face.
所报道的实验研究了对陌生面孔的记忆，以及它如何受到种族、面部表情、注视方向和观察者社交焦虑水平的影响。总共87名日本参与者最初记忆了东方人和高加索人的面孔图像，这些面孔展示出开心或愤怒的表情，且目光直视或 avert（回避）。然后，他们看到之前见过的面孔以及展示中性表情的额外干扰面孔，并判断自己之前是否见过这些面孔。他们的社交焦虑水平通过问卷调查来衡量。无论面孔的注视方向或种族如何，对带有开心表情的面孔的识别比对带有愤怒表情的面孔更准确（开心优势），但这种趋势在社交焦虑水平较高的人身上会减弱，这可能是因为他们对社交互动中积极反馈的焦虑增加。有趣的是，对于高度焦虑的参与者，在本族面孔上观察到的开心优势的降低比对异族面孔更为明显。结果表明，愤怒表情会干扰对面孔身份相关特征的处理，但对开心面孔的记忆会受到社交焦虑特质的影响，而且影响的程度可能取决于面孔的重要性。
