Bublatzky Florian, Guerra Pedro, Alpers Georg W
Central Institute of Mental Health Mannheim, Medical Faculty Mannheim/Heidelberg University, Germany; University of Granada, Department of Personality, Spain; Clinical Psychology and Biological Psychology and Psychotherapy, Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, University of Mannheim, Germany.
University of Granada, Department of Personality, Spain.
Cortex. 2020 Oct;131:164-178. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2020.07.009. Epub 2020 Aug 11.
The face of a friend indicates safety, the face of a foe can indicate threat. Here, we examine the effects of verbal instructions ('beware of this person') on the perception of unknown persons. Focusing on visual attention, face identity and facial expression information is examined during instructed threat-of-shock or safety. However, shocks never occurred. Participants quickly acquired instructed threat associations, and electrocortical processing differentiated threat- from safe-identities as well as emotional and neutral facial expressions. Importantly, face encoding varied as a joint function of identity and facial expression, as revealed by pronounced N170 amplitudes to smiling threat-identities. Moreover, instructions readily reversed previously learned affective associations leading to attention allocation and memory updating as reflected by N170, EPN and P3 amplitudes toward new threat-identities displaying angry expressions. These findings demonstrate that person perception flexibly re-adjusts according to minimal information. Intriguingly, perceptual biases occur even though the anticipated aversive consequence does not occur, with implications for research on stereotyping and anxious psychopathology.
朋友的面孔代表安全，敌人的面孔则意味着威胁。在此，我们研究言语指令（“小心这个人”）对未知人物认知的影响。聚焦于视觉注意力，在被告知有电击威胁或安全的情况下，对面部身份和面部表情信息进行研究。然而，电击从未发生。参与者迅速获得了被告知的威胁关联，并且脑电皮层处理能够区分威胁身份与安全身份，以及情绪化和中性的面部表情。重要的是，面部编码因身份和面部表情的联合作用而有所不同，这表现为对微笑的威胁身份有明显的N170波幅。此外，指令能够轻易逆转先前习得的情感关联，从而导致注意力分配和记忆更新，这通过N170、EPN和P3波幅对显示愤怒表情的新威胁身份的反应得以体现。这些发现表明，人物认知会根据极少的信息灵活地重新调整。有趣的是，即使预期的厌恶后果并未出现，仍会产生感知偏差，这对刻板印象和焦虑心理病理学的研究具有启示意义。
