Jd. Eastwood et al., Differential attentional guidance by unattended faces expressing positive and negative emotion, PERC PSYCH, 63(6), 2001, pp. 1004-1013
Four experiments were conducted to evaluate whether focal attention can be
guided by an analysis of the emotional expression in a face. Participants s
earched displays of 7, 11, 15, and 19 schematic faces for the location of a
unique face expressing either a positive or a negative emotion located amo
ng distractor faces expressing a neutral emotion. The slopes of the search
functions for locating the negative face were shallower than the slopes of
the search functions for locating the positive face (Experiments 1A and 2A)
. When the faces were inverted to reduce holistic face perception, the slop
es of the search functions for locating positive and negative faces were no
t different (Experiments IB and 2B). The results suggest that the emotional
expression in a face can be perceived outside the focus of attention and c
an guide focal attention to the location of the face.