Abstract
BackgroundRecent work on non-human primates indicates that the allocation of social attention is mediated by characteristics of the attending animal, such as social status and genotype, as well as by the value of the target to which attention is directed. Studies of humans indicate that an individual’s emotion state also plays a crucial role in mediating their social attention; for example, individuals look for longer towards aggressive faces when they are feeling more anxious, and this bias leads to increased negative arousal and distraction from other ongoing tasks. To our knowledge, no studies have tested for an effect of emotion state on allocation of social attention in any non-human species.MethodologyWe presented captive adult male rhesus macaques with pairs of adult male conspecific face images - one with an aggressive expression, one with a neutral expression - and recorded gaze towards these images. Each animal was tested twice, once during a putatively stressful condition (i.e. following a veterinary health check), and once during a neutral (or potentially positive) condition (i.e. a period of environmental enrichment). Initial analyses revealed that behavioural indicators of anxiety and stress were significantly higher after the health check than during enrichment, indicating that the former caused a negative shift in emotional state.Principle FindingsThe macaques showed initial vigilance for aggressive faces across both conditions, but subsequent responses differed between conditions. Following the health check, initial vigilance was followed by rapid and sustained avoidance of aggressive faces. By contrast, during the period of enrichment, the macaques showed sustained attention towards the same aggressive faces.Conclusions/SignificanceThese data provide, to our knowledge, the first evidence that shifts in emotion state mediate social attention towards and away from facial cues of emotion in a non-human animal. This work provides novel insights into the evolution of emotion-attention interactions in humans, and mechanisms of social behaviour in non-human primates, and may have important implications for understanding animal psychological wellbeing.
Highlights
People’s emotion state strongly influences their allocation of social attention [1], [2], and this plays a fundamental role in shaping their social interactions [3,4,5]
Experimental evidence has shown that attentional bias for threat is further enhanced in individuals with increased levels of anxiety: people who report higher levels of state anxiety look for longer towards aggressive faces compared with neutral distractors [2] and are faster to detect a probe that appears at the location of an aggressive face than they are to detect the same probe at the location of a neutral face [6]
This supports our prediction, and findings from previous studies, that the procedures involved in the health check led to a negative shift in emotion state, and that this shift lasted beyond the duration of the experimental testing sessions
Summary
People’s emotion state strongly influences their allocation of social attention [1], [2], and this plays a fundamental role in shaping their social interactions [3,4,5]. Humans have a bias to attend preferentially to signals of threat, such as angry faces compared with neutral faces [1], [9]. This attentional bias for threatening stimuli may provide a fitness benefit in terms of faster detection of threat and improved ability to defend against, or escape, danger [10]. Studies of humans indicate that an individual’s emotion state plays a crucial role in mediating their social attention; for example, individuals look for longer towards aggressive faces when they are feeling more anxious, and this bias leads to increased negative arousal and distraction from other ongoing tasks. No studies have tested for an effect of emotion state on allocation of social attention in any non-human species
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