Abstract
In the current research, we extend past work on the effects of ambient darkness and threat to the domain of memory for expressive faces. In one study, we examined the effects of ambient darkness and individual differences in state anxiety on memory of unfamiliar expressive faces. Here, participants were seated in either a dark or light room and encoded a set of unfamiliar faces with angry, happy, and neutral facial expressions. A subsequent recognition task revealed an interactive effect of ambient darkness, anxiety, and target expression. Highly anxious participants in ambient darkness had worse memory for angry faces than did low-anxiety participants. On the other hand, the recognition performance for happy faces was affected neither by the darkness nor state anxiety. The results suggest not only that ambient darkness has its strongest effect on anxious perceivers, but also that person × situation effects should be considered in face recognition research.
Highlights
Facial expressions are meaningful social signals for human interaction in daily life
The purpose of this study was to investigate whether ambient darkness and anxiety affect the recognition performance for unfamiliar faces, especially for angry faces
This experiment provides the first evidence of an interactive effect of darkness and anxiety on face memory
Summary
Facial expressions are meaningful social signals for human interaction in daily life. The ability to detect a threatening signal, such as anger from the face of another individual, is a crucial skill for avoiding the risk of attack from an angry person or maintaining an appropriate relationship by placating the person. Angry faces are detected in the environment (e.g., Hansen and Hansen, 1988), especially when looming toward the self (see Adams et al, 2006), in part because they appear to arrest attention. Given the adaptive advantages to responding quickly to threats, angry expressions in the environment serve to quickly engage avoidance behaviors as well (Marsh et al, 2005)
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