Does Exposure to Hostile Environments Predict Enhanced Emotion Detection?

Collabra: Psychology

Gijsbert Bijlstra¹  Willem E. Frankenhuis¹ 

[1] Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen

关键词: evolution;    development;    exposure to violence;    emotion perception;    signal detection theory;   

DOI  :  10.1525/collabra.127

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: University of California Press

【 摘 要 】

We used a Face-in-the-Crowd task to examine whether hostile environments predict enhanced detection of anger, and whether such enhanced cognition occurs for a different negative emotion, sadness, as well. We conducted a well-powered, preregistered study in 100 college students and 100 individuals from a community sample with greater exposure to hostile environments. At the group level, the community sample was less accurate at detecting both angry and sad faces than students; and, only students discriminated anger more accurately than sadness. At the individual level, having experienced more violence did not predict enhanced anger detection accuracy. In general, participants had a lower threshold (i.e., a more liberal criterion) for detecting emotion in response to anger than sadness. And, students had a higher threshold (i.e., a more conservative criterion) for detecting emotion than the community sample in response to both anger and sadness. Overall, these findings contradict our hypothesis that exposure to hostile environments predicts enhanced danger detection. Rather, our community sample was more prone to over-perceiving emotions, consistent with previous studies showing bias in threat-exposed populations. Future work is needed to tease apart the conditions in which people exposed to social danger show enhanced accuracy or bias in their perception of emotions. 

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【 授权许可】

CC BY