Not All Emotions Are Equal: Fear Chemosignals Lower Awareness Thresholds Only for Fearful Faces. (30th June 2020)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- Not All Emotions Are Equal: Fear Chemosignals Lower Awareness Thresholds Only for Fearful Faces. (30th June 2020)
- Main Title:
- Not All Emotions Are Equal: Fear Chemosignals Lower Awareness Thresholds Only for Fearful Faces
- Authors:
- Silva, Fábio
Gomes, Nuno
Korb, Sebastian
Semin, Gün R - Abstract:
- Abstract: Exposure to body odors (chemosignals) collected under different emotional states (i.e., emotional chemosignals) can modulate our visual system, biasing visual perception. Recent research has suggested that exposure to fear body odors, results in a generalized faster access to visual awareness of different emotional facial expressions (i.e., fear, happy, and neutral). In the present study, we aimed at replicating and extending these findings by exploring if these effects are limited to fear odor, by introducing a second negative body odor—that is, disgust. We compared the time that 3 different emotional facial expressions (i.e., fear, disgust, and neutral) took to reach visual awareness, during a breaking continuous flash suppression paradigm, across 3 body odor conditions (i.e., fear, disgust, and neutral). We found that fear body odors do not trigger an overall faster access to visual awareness, but instead sped-up access to awareness specifically for facial expressions of fear. Disgust odor, on the other hand, had no effects on awareness thresholds of facial expressions. These findings contrast with prior results, suggesting that the potential of fear body odors to induce visual processing adjustments is specific to fear cues. Furthermore, our results support a unique ability of fear body odors in inducing such visual processing changes, compared with other negative emotional chemosignals (i.e., disgust). These conclusions raise interesting questions as to howAbstract: Exposure to body odors (chemosignals) collected under different emotional states (i.e., emotional chemosignals) can modulate our visual system, biasing visual perception. Recent research has suggested that exposure to fear body odors, results in a generalized faster access to visual awareness of different emotional facial expressions (i.e., fear, happy, and neutral). In the present study, we aimed at replicating and extending these findings by exploring if these effects are limited to fear odor, by introducing a second negative body odor—that is, disgust. We compared the time that 3 different emotional facial expressions (i.e., fear, disgust, and neutral) took to reach visual awareness, during a breaking continuous flash suppression paradigm, across 3 body odor conditions (i.e., fear, disgust, and neutral). We found that fear body odors do not trigger an overall faster access to visual awareness, but instead sped-up access to awareness specifically for facial expressions of fear. Disgust odor, on the other hand, had no effects on awareness thresholds of facial expressions. These findings contrast with prior results, suggesting that the potential of fear body odors to induce visual processing adjustments is specific to fear cues. Furthermore, our results support a unique ability of fear body odors in inducing such visual processing changes, compared with other negative emotional chemosignals (i.e., disgust). These conclusions raise interesting questions as to how fear odor might interact with the visual processing stream, whilst simultaneously giving rise to future avenues of research. … (more)
- Is Part Of:
- Chemical senses. Volume 45:Number 7(2020)
- Journal:
- Chemical senses
- Issue:
- Volume 45:Number 7(2020)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 45, Issue 7 (2020)
- Year:
- 2020
- Volume:
- 45
- Issue:
- 7
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2020-0045-0007-0000
- Page Start:
- 601
- Page End:
- 608
- Publication Date:
- 2020-06-30
- Subjects:
- chemosignals -- continuous flash suppression -- disgust -- fear -- visual awareness
Chemical senses -- Periodicals
612.8 - Journal URLs:
- http://chemse.oupjournals.org ↗
http://chemse.oxfordjournals.org ↗
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/ ↗
http://firstsearch.oclc.org ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1093/chemse/bjaa047 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 0379-864X
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - 3151.510000
British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 24993.xml