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Running in fear: an investigation into the dimensional account of emotion in discriminating emotional expressions

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Abstract

Emotion can be conceptualized by the dimensional account of emotion with the dimensions of valence and arousal. There is little discussion of the difference in discriminability across the dimensions. The present study hypothesized that any pair of emotional expressions differing in the polarity of both valence and arousal dimensions would be easier to distinguish than a pair differing in only one dimension. The results indicate that the difference in the dimensions did not affect participants’ reaction time. Most pairs of emotional expressions, except those involving fear, were similarly discriminative. Reaction times to pairs with a fearful expression were faster than to those without. The fast reaction time to fearful facial expressions underscores the survival value of emotions.

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Funding

This study was funded by Hong Kong Research Grants Council (Grant Number: UGC/FDS15/H21/14).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hong Kong Shue Yan University, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

    L. Y. Lo, W. O. Li & L. P. Lee

  2. The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

    P. S. Yeung

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  1. L. Y. Lo
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  2. W. O. Li
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Correspondence to L. Y. Lo.

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Human participants

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Human Research Ethics Committee in Hong Kong Shue Yan University and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with non-human animals performed by any of the authors.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Additional information

Handling editor: Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos (Stockholm University);

Reviewers: David Alberto Rodriguez (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and an anonymous reviewer.

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Lo, L.Y., Li, W.O., Lee, L.P. et al. Running in fear: an investigation into the dimensional account of emotion in discriminating emotional expressions. Cogn Process 19, 505–515 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-018-0868-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-018-0868-3

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