Li Jinhui, He Dexian, Zhou Lingdan, Zhao Xueru, Zhao Tingting, Zhang Wei, He Xianyou
School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China.
Academy of Educational Science Talent Capital Base, Beijing Institute of Education, Beijing, China.
Front Psychol. 2019 Nov 25;10:2496. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02496. eCollection 2019.
The classic theory of face perception holds that the invariant (e.g., identity and race) and variant (e.g., expression) dimensions of face information are independent of one another. Two separate neural systems are involved in face processing. However, the dynamic theory of face perception indicates that these two neural systems interact bidirectionally. Accordingly, by using the emotion categorization task and morph movies task, we investigated the influence of facial attractiveness on facial expression recognition and provided further evidence supporting the dynamic theory of face perception in both the static and dynamic contexts. In addition, this research used familiar celebrities (including actors, television personalities, politicians, and comedians) and explored the role of familiarity in face perception. In two experiments, the participants were asked to assess the expressions of faces with different levels of attractiveness and different levels of familiarity. We found that regardless of being in a static or dynamic face situation, happy expressions on attractive faces can be recognized more quickly, highlighting the advantage of happy expression recognition. Moreover, in static and dynamic familiar face situations, familiarity has a greater impact on expression recognition, and the influence of attraction on expression recognition may be weakened or even unaffected. Our results show that facial attractiveness influences the recognition of facial expressions in both static and dynamic contexts and highlight the importance of familiarity in face perception.
面部感知的经典理论认为，面部信息的不变维度（如身份和种族）和可变维度（如表情）是相互独立的。面部处理涉及两个独立的神经系统。然而，面部感知的动态理论表明，这两个神经系统会双向互动。因此，我们通过使用情绪分类任务和变形电影任务，研究了面部吸引力对面部表情识别的影响，并在静态和动态情境中提供了进一步支持面部感知动态理论的证据。此外，本研究使用了熟悉的名人（包括演员、电视名人、政治家和喜剧演员），并探讨了熟悉度在面部感知中的作用。在两个实验中，要求参与者评估具有不同吸引力水平和不同熟悉度水平的面部表情。我们发现，无论处于静态还是动态面部情境中，有吸引力的面部上的快乐表情都能被更快地识别出来，突出了快乐表情识别的优势。此外，在静态和动态熟悉面部情境中，熟悉度对表情识别的影响更大，而吸引力对表情识别的影响可能会减弱甚至不受影响。我们的结果表明，面部吸引力在静态和动态情境中都会影响面部表情的识别，并突出了熟悉度在面部感知中的重要性。
