非任务相关条件下社会权力对愤怒表情加工的影响

The Influence of Power on Anger Expression under Task-Irrelevant Condition

之前的研究表明权力能够影响愤怒表情的加工,但是并不清楚当愤怒刺激是非目标任务刺激时(非任务相关条件下),权力是否影响以及如何影响愤怒表情的加工。本研究采用事件相关电位技术,首先操纵情绪观察者(被试)和情绪表达者(目标)的权力水平(高vs.低),之后采用修正的oddball范式考察当愤怒刺激是非目标任务刺激时,情绪观察者和表达者的权力水平对愤怒情绪加工的影响。行为结果表明,与高权力个体相比,低权力个体在识别年老面孔目标时成绩更低。脑电结果发现,与高权力个体相比,低权力个体对中性目标刺激和愤怒的非目标刺激均产生了更强的N170波幅,表现出更强的敏感性。该研究结果说明,高权力个体的行为成绩优于低权力个体的行为成绩,即使在非任务相关条件下,与高权力个体相比,低权力个体对愤怒情绪刺激的早期敏感性仍然更强。

Anger is particularly important for maintaining social relationships.Thus,accurate perception of anger expressions forms the basis of successful social interactions.Since anger expressions usually occur in social contexts,then the processing of anger expressions should be influenced by the context in which they occur.The present research focuses on how social power-the ability to influence others by controlling resources and outcomes as a social context affects the processing of anger expressions.Social power is a basic dimension of social relations and plays an important role in social interaction.There are bidirectional links between anger and social power.On the one hand,previous studies found that expressions of anger could predict power perception.For example,for failure situations,anger expressions could signal the sender’s dominance over the other.On the other hand,power can also affect angry expression recognition,compared with low-power individuals,high-power individuals are less accurate recognizing others’anger expressions.Although accumulative evidence has demonstrated that the power or status level of both the emotion observer and the emotion expresser could impact on the processing of anger expressions,it remains unclear that whether and how social power affect the processing of anger expressions when angry expressions were task-irrelevant stimuli.With the help of event-related potentials(ERPs),the present study used an oddball paradigm to investigate how social power of the emotion observer(perceiver)and the emotion expresser(target)modulates neural responses to anger expressions when they were task-irrelevant stimuli.The experiment used two factors(individual power:high,low)×2(target power:high,low)design to explore the effect of power on anger expressions when anger expressions were task-irrelevant stimuli.Using FaceGen Modeller software,we generated 12 faces of Southeast Asian males as raw materials,and the standard stimulus is the 43-year-old neutral expression face,the 65-year-old neutral face is a target deviation stimulus and the 43-year-old angry face is a non-target deviation stimulus.Specifically,participants assigned into a high-power(HP),low-power(LP)were primed by power episode.The participants were asked to recall and describe a particular incident in which they had power over another individual(high power prime)or someone else had power over them(low power prime)within 15 minutes.Then,they would see a face from different occupational profiles which emphasized the person’s high or low status relative to the participant.Finally,they were asked to ignore the standard stimuli(43-years-old neutral expression faces)and the non-target deviant stimuli(43-years-old angry faces),and were asked to press the‘‘F’’key on the keyboard with the left indexfinger as accurately and quickly as possible if the target deviant stimuli(65 years old neutral faces)appeared.The behavioral results showed that high-power individuals responded faster to detect identify neutral face targets than low-power individuals,independent of the power level of target power.The ERP analysis showed that low power individuals showed lager N170 amplitudes in response to both non-target angry faces and neutral face targets.The present study extended previous studies by showing that individual power enhanced their performance in cognitive task,and decreased their sensory processing of anger faces when they are not task-relevant stimuli.