Electrophysiological evidence for attentional capture by irrelevant angry facial expressions

Abstract

Attention is believed to be biased toward threatening objects or faces. Therefore, we tested whether angry face stimuli would capture attention even when they are irrelevant to the task. Observers searched for a neutral face with a tilted nose. On some trials, the target was shown together with an irrelevant angry or happy face and we measured the N2pc (an electrophysiological marker of attentional selectivity) to the distractor expression. We found that angry distractors triggered an N2pc, whereas happy distractors did not. Follow-up experiments explored the reliability of the N2pc to angry distractors using upright or inverted angry faces, the eye or mouth region of angry faces and face-like stimuli. We conclude that a threatening expression has a high attentional priority due to its emotional content and captures attention despite being irrelevant for the task.