Initial perceiver reaction to facial disfigurement

Abstract

Ten experiments were designed to address the question of what response is elicited by facial disfigurement in the initial seconds of perception. The theoretical frameworks and methodology of attention to facial emotion was adopted to provide a framework in an under-researched area. Three different paradigms were utilised to determine whether or not the response to facial disfigurement mirrored the response to facial anger, and thus indicative of a threat response. Experiments 1 to 4 used the rapid serial visual presentation design, revealing the effect of faceness under temporal constraints. Specifically, these experiments showed that whilst angry faces exhibited a threat effect, disfigured faces did not. The exogenous cueing paradigm was then adopted in Experiments 5 - 9. These experiments demonstrated that angry faces elicited an aversion threat effect for high anxious. Again, however, no threat effect with disfigured faces was revealed. Finally, Experiment 10 revealed tentative evidence of a similar response to both angry and disfigured faces. Both faces elicited a fast response by participants when the image approached the perceiver compared to receding in an approach-avoid task. This thesis therefore provided an exploratory examination of initial responses and has indicated that disfigured faces elicited a similar response to angry faces but only under certain conditions. Whilst angry faces elicited an aversion response when presented both in the centre of fixation and in the periphery, disfigured faces appeared to elicit an avoidance response only when direct gaze was established. The underlying explanation for the similarities and differences are discussed in terms of a cognitive-evolutionary model in relation to physical and contamination threat responses.

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ORCID for Sarah Stevenage: orcid.org/0000-0003-4155-2939

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