Men fear other men most: Gender specific brain activations in perceiving threat from dynamic faces and bodies. An fMRI study.

We report a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment showing different activation patterns as a function of threatening signals from facial or bodily expressions and these differed between male and female participants as a function of male and female actors. Male observers showed a clear motor preparation response to threatening male body language

Islamic Headdress Influences How Emotion is Recognized from the Eyes

Previous research has shown a negative bias in the perception of whole facial expressions from out-group members. Whether or not emotion recognition from the eyes is already sensitive to contextual information is presently a matter of debate. In three experiments we tested whether emotions can be recognized when just the eyes are visible and whether this recognition is affected by context cues, such as various Islamic headdresses vs. a cap or a scarf. Our results indicate that fear is still well recognized from a briefly flashed (100 ms) image of a women wearing a burqa with less than 20% transparency of the eye region. Moreover, the type of headdress influences how emotions are recognized. In a group of participants from non-Islamic background, fear was recognized better from women wearing a niqāb than from women wearing a cap and a shawl, whereas the opposite was observed for happy and sad expressions. The response patterns showed that fearful and anger labels were more often attributed to women with a niqāb vs. a cap and a shawl and again, an opposite pattern was observed for the happy response. However, there was no general response bias: both correct and incorrect responses were influenced by the facial expression as well. Anxiety levels and/or explicit negative associations with the Islam as measured via questionnaires did not mediate the effects. Consistent with the face literature, we conclude that the recognition of emotions from the eyes is also influenced by context

Perceptual integration of bodily and facial emotion cues in chimpanzees and humans

For highly visual species like primates, facial and bodily emotion expressions play a crucial role in emotion perception. However, most research focuses on facial expressions, while the perception of bodily cues is still poorly understood. Using a novel comparative priming eye-tracking design, we examined whether our close primate relatives, the chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), and humans infer emotions from bodily cues through subsequent perceptual integration with facial expressions. In experiment 1, we primed chimpanzees with videos of bodily movements of unfamiliar conspecifics engaged in social activities of opposite valence (play and fear) against neutral control scenes to examine attentional bias toward succeeding congruent or incongruent facial expressions. In experiment 2, we assessed the same attentional bias in humans yet using stimuli showing unfamiliar humans. In experiment 3, humans watched the chimpanzee stimuli of experiment 1, to examine cross-species emotion perception. Chimpanzees exhibited a persistent fear-related attention bias but did not associate bodily with congruent facial cues. In contrast, humans prioritized conspecifics' congruent facial expressions (matching bodily scenes) over incongruent ones (mismatching). Nevertheless, humans exhibited no congruency effect when viewing chimpanzee stimuli, suggesting difficulty in cross-species emotion perception. These results highlight differences in emotion perception, with humans being greatly affected by fearful and playful bodily cues and chimpanzees being strongly drawn toward fearful expressions, regardless of the preceding bodily priming cue. These data advance our understanding of the evolution of emotion signaling and the presence of distinct perceptual patterns in hominids

The Role of Emotion Projection, Sexual Desire, and Self-Rated Attractiveness in the Sexual Overperception Bias

A consistent finding in the literature is that men overperceive sexual interest in women (i.e., sexual overperception bias). Several potential mechanisms have been proposed for this bias, including projecting one’s own interest onto a given partner, sexual desire, and self-rated attractiveness. Here, we examined the influence of these factors in attraction detection accuracy during speed-dates. Sixty-seven participants (34 women) split in four groups went on a total of 10 speed-dates with all opposite-sex members of their group, resulting in 277 dates. The results showed that attraction detection accuracy was reliably predicted by projection of own interest in combination with participant sex. Specifically, men were more accurate than women in detecting attraction when they were not interested in their partner compared to when they were interested. These results are discussed in the wider context of arousal influencing detection of partner attraction

Multimodal mate choice: Exploring the effects of sight, sound, and scent on partner choice in a speed-date paradigm

When people meet a potential partner for the first time, they are confronted with multiple sources of information, encompassing different modalities, that they can use to determine whether this partner is suitable for them or not. While visual attractiveness has widely been studied with regard to partner choice, olfactory and auditory cues have received less attention, even though they might influence the attitudes that people have towards their partner. Therefore, in this study, we employed a combination of pre-date multimodal rating tasks followed by speed-date sessions. This offered a naturalistic setup to study partner choice and disentangle the relative effects of a priori attractiveness ratings of sight, scent and sound on date success. Visual attractiveness ratings showed a strong positive correlation with propensity to meet the partner again, while the effects of olfactory and auditory attractiveness were negligible or not robust. Furthermore, we found no robust sex differences in the importance of the three modalities. Our findings underscore the relative importance of visual attractiveness in initial mate choice, but do not corroborate the idea that static pre-date measures of auditory and olfactory attractiveness can predict first date outcomes

People that score high on psychopathic traits are less likely to yawn contagiously

Considerable variation exists in the contagiousness of yawning, and numerous studies have been conducted to investigate the proximate mechanisms involved in this response. Yet, findings within the psychological literature are mixed, with many studies conducted on relatively small and homogeneous samples. Here, we aimed to replicate and extend upon research suggesting a negative relationship between psychopathic traits and yawn contagion in community samples. In the largest study of contagious yawning to date (N = 458), which included both university students and community members from across 50 nationalities, participants completed an online study in which they self-reported on their yawn contagion to a video stimulus and completed four measures of psychopathy: the primary and secondary psychopathy scales from the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (LSRPS), the psychopathy construct from the Dirty Dozen, and the Psychopathic Personality Traits Scale (PPTS). Results support previous findings in that participants that yawned contagiously tended to score lower on the combined and primary measures of psychopathy. That said, tiredness was the strongest predictor across all models. These findings align with functional accounts of spontaneous and contagious yawning and a generalized impairment in overall patterns of behavioral contagion and biobehavioral synchrony among people high in psychopathic traits

Visual Attention Bias for Self-Made Artworks

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Scleral pigmentation leads to conspicuous, not cryptic, eye morphology in chimpanzees

Gaze following has been argued to be uniquely human, facilitated by our depigmented, white sclera [M. Tomasello, B. Hare, H. Lehmann, J. Call, J. Hum. Evol. 52, 314–320 (2007)]—the pale area around the colored iris—and to underpin human-specific behaviors such as language. Today, we know that great apes show diverse patterns of scleral coloration [J. A. Mayhew, J. C. Gómez, Am. J. Primatol. 77, 869–877 (2015); J. O. Perea García, T. Grenzner, G. Hešková, P. Mitkidis, Commun. Integr. Biol. 10, e1264545 (2016)]. We compare scleral coloration and its relative contrast with the iris in bonobos, chimpanzees, and humans. Like humans, bonobos’ sclerae are lighter relative to the color of their irises; chimpanzee sclerae are darker than their irises. The relative contrast between the sclera and iris in all 3 species is comparable, suggesting a perceptual mechanism to explain recent evidence that nonhuman great apes also rely on gaze as a social cue.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Individual attractiveness preferences differentially modulate immediate and voluntary attention

Physical attractiveness plays a crucial role in mate choice for both men and women. This is reflected in visual attention: people immediately attend towards and look longer at attractive faces, especially when they are motivated to find a partner. However, previous studies did not incorporate real-life dating decisions. Here, we aimed to combine attentional tasks with individual attractiveness ratings and a real-life mate choice context, namely a speed-dating paradigm. We investigated whether heterosexual non-committed young adults showed biases in immediate and voluntary attention towards attractive faces and preferred dating partners. In line with previous research, we found considerable individual differences in individual attractiveness preferences. Furthermore, our results showed that men had a bias towards attractive faces and preferred dating partners in the immediate attention task, while results for women were mixed. In the voluntary attention task, however, both men and women had an attentional bias towards attractive faces and preferred dating partners. Our results suggest that individual attractiveness preferences are good predictors of especially voluntary attention. We discuss these findings from an evolutionary perspective and suggest directions for future research

A comparative framework of inter-individual coordination and pair-bonding

Inter-individual coordination (IIC) at the behavioral and physiological level, and its association with courtship and pair-bond maintenance, have been receiving increased attention in the scientific literature in recent years. However, there is no integrative framework combining the plethora of findings in humans and nonhuman species yet that addresses the evolutionary origins of IIC. Here, we take a comparative approach and review findings on the link between IIC and pair-bond formation, maintenance, and bi-parental care. Our review suggests that across socially monogamous species, IIC – at a behavioral and physiological level – is correlated with the likelihood of forming and retaining a pair-bond, and with reproductive success. We expand on the pair-bonding hypothesis by stating that higher levels of IIC might be beneficial for relationship quality and bi-parental care and, as a result, might also become a preferred trait in the formation and maintenance of a pair-bond. We further discuss the key questions to disentangle the evolution of IIC based on this hypothesis