Motivated Viewing emotionally ambiguous facial expressions and individual differences in affect

The amount of effort expended by the viewer to maintain or remove an image presented to them indicates the reward value of that image. Previous research using fMRI has validated this paradigm as producing an index of neural reward (Aharon et al. 2001), with increased viewing being correlated with corresponding activation in the reward system (e.g., orbitofrontal cortex, nucleus accumbens, ventral tegmental area). Our research with heterosexual males demonstrated attractiveness interacted with the emotional nature of expressions, with attractive expressions viewed for longer than non-attractive ones, and happy and neutral were perceived as being more aesthetically pleasing than angry ones. Angry attractive expressions were viewed for a simliar duration as for non-attractive happy and neutral expressions. Research into the resolution of emotionally ambiguous stimuli has shown that anxious indiviudals are more likely to opt for a threatening interpretation of an ambiguous stimulus, if one were available. This bias for threat has been demonstrated with homophones, homographs and expressions made emotionally ambiguous by interpolating emotional expression exemplars into images with varying degrees of emotional characteristics. Using the emotional face hexagon, Each of six exemplar emotional expressions were interporlated with the expression most easily confuseable with it (e.g., fear is structurally more similar to fear than to disgust). These emotions created six continuua of expressions (e.g., 10% happy/90% fear, 20% happy/ 80% fear etc) were presented to individuals high and low in anxiety (Richards et al., 2002, reprinted, 2016). High compared to low trait anxious individuals were more sensitive to fear in expressions but only when fear was one of the composite emotions (suggesting a preceptual sensitivity for fear rather than a response bias). This study used a direct measure of ambiguity resolution, by requiring participants to classifiy each expression as one of the 6 basic emotions.