When a smile is a conflict: Affective mismatch between facial displays and group membership induces conflict and triggers cognitive control.

Abstract

Affective responses to emotional expressions critically depend on the expresser's group membership: Facial displays by in-group members elicit concordant affective behavior in the perceiver whereas out-group expressions elicit discordant behavior. A prominent explanation for this response divergence assumes that initial affective responses are elicited by the social message signaled by facial displays (social intentions account). In this study we tested an alternative account, proposing that specific combinations of group membership and facial expression (i.e., positive expressions by negatively evaluated out-group members or negative expressions by positively evaluated in-group members) result in affective conflict (processing conflict account). In 4 experiments White participants executed simple 2-choice categorization tasks on pictures of emotions expressed by Middle-Eastern (out-group) or White persons (in-group). We observed consistent performance decrements to affectively incongruent compared with congruent faces. Moreover, consistent with the processing conflict account, experienced conflict from affectively incongruent faces reactively induces recruitment of cognitive control resources. Conflict adaptation effects occurred (a) irrespective of the type of conflict and (b) also for emotional facial expressions for which the underlying social message does not vary with group membership. In summary, these results substantiate the processing conflict hypothesis. Consequences for the prominent social intentions account are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).