Experimental Study of Attentional Bias to Negative Emotion Facial Expressions in High Trait Anger Individuals

Da JunZHANG Yun-Bo LIU

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2011, Vol. 34 ›› Issue (2) : 322-327.

PDF(564 KB)
PDF(564 KB)
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2011, Vol. 34 ›› Issue (2) : 322-327.

Experimental Study of Attentional Bias to Negative Emotion Facial Expressions in High Trait Anger Individuals

  • 1,2, Da JunZHANG3, Yun-Bo LIU
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Abstract

Abstract: Objective Trait anger is a general tendency to react angrily to perceive situations, and it is individual differences in anger proneness such as the tendency to perceive a wide range of situations as annoying or frustrating, and the disposition to respond to such situations with elevations in state anger. Many studies focused on high trait anger individual’s attentional bias,but previous studies had no unanimous conclusion about whether high trait anger participants have attentional bias to negative stimulus, so this study aims to investigate whether there is attentional bias to negative emotion facial expressions in high trait anger individuals. Methods Visual dot probe task was used in this study, and stimulus are real facial expressions including anger, fear, sadness, neutral and happy faces. A 2 (high trait anger / low trait anger) × 5 (happy / neutral / angry / sad / fear) × 2 (identical side / opposite side) mixed design was held to compare the reaction time deviations to different emotion facial expressions with detecting probe at different side in the high trait anger participants and the low trait anger participants(high trait anger: n=23,low trait anger: n=23)in the condition of stimulus presentation time 500ms. E-Prime program was used to present the stimulus and to record the reaction time and accuracy to stimulus of all subjects in the visual dot probe task. SPSS was used and Repeated Measurement ANOVA was made. Both the main effect of each variable and interaction effect of variables were tested. Results It was shown by Repeated Measurement ANOVA that marginal main effect(F=2.462,p=.073)in facial expressions properties and interaction effect(F=3.323,p=.025) between groups and facial expressions properties were found, that main effect in detecting locations(F=5.089,p=.029)and interaction effect(F=12.736,p=.001) between groups and detecting locations were found, that interaction effect(F=4.905,p=.001) among groups, facial expressions properties and detecting locations was found. Further analysis showed the reaction time to detecting stimulus of angry facial expression under the identical side is shorter than under the opposite side in high trait anger group[(386.12±50.09)ms VS.(403.33±59.39)ms,F=17.050,p=.000], and it also showed that the reaction time to detecting stimulus of happy facial expression under the identical side is longer than under the opposite side in high trait anger group[(396.88±53.87)m

Key words

Trait anger / Attentional bias / Dot probe task

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Da JunZHANG Yun-Bo LIU. Experimental Study of Attentional Bias to Negative Emotion Facial Expressions in High Trait Anger Individuals[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2011, 34(2): 322-327
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