Facial affect perception in anxious and nonanxious men without depression

Abstract

In two experiments a tachistoscopic paradigm was used to examine hemispheric differences in facial affect perception among anxious and nonanxious men without depression. In Experiment 1, hemispheric processing of Ekman and Friesen’s (1978) happy, angry, and neutral emotional faces was tachistoscopically examined, with reaction time as the dependent variable. The following results were obtained: (1) a right-hemisphere (LVF) advantage for the perception of facial affect, consistent with previous reports of the right hemisphere’s relative specialization for facial affect perception and (2) slower reaction time to facial affect stimuli for anxious men, regardless of valence and visual field. Similar procedures were used in Experiment 2, but with accuracy rather than reaction time as the dependent measure. Analyses yielded a three-way interaction, with anxious men identifying angry affects in the left versus right visual field more accurately, whereas nonanxious men demonstrated symmetry for the processing of angry affects. Implications for hemispheric asymmetry (i.e., relative right posterior activation) among anxious individuals without depression are discussed.