Processing of facial expressions of same-race and other-race faces: distinct and shared neural underpinnings | Zendy

Xuena Wang | Zendy; Shihui Han | Zendy

AI Assistant Blog Pricing

Home ZAIA Blog

Open Access

Processing of facial expressions of same-race and other-race faces: distinct and shared neural underpinnings

Author(s) -

Xuena Wang,

Shihui Han

Publication year - 2021

Publication title -

social cognitive and affective neuroscience

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 2.229

H-Index - 103

eISSN - 1749-5024

pISSN - 1749-5016

DOI - 10.1093/scan/nsab027

Subject(s) - psychology , facial expression , outgroup , emotional expression , race (biology) , ingroups and outgroups , neural correlates of consciousness , face (sociological concept) , expression (computer science) , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , social psychology , communication , cognition , neuroscience , linguistics , philosophy , botany , computer science , biology , programming language

People understand others’ emotions quickly from their facial expressions. However, facial expressions of ingroup and outgroup members may signal different social information and thus be mediated by distinct neural activities. We investigated whether there are distinct neuronal responses to fearful and happy expressions of same-race (SR) and other-race (OR) faces. We recorded electroencephalogram from Chinese adults when viewing an adaptor face (with fearful/neutral expressions in Experiment 1 but happy/neutral expressions in Experiment 2) and a target face (with fearful expressions in Experiment 1 but happy expressions in Experiment 2) presented in rapid succession. We found that both fearful and happy (vs neutral) adaptor faces increased the amplitude of a frontocentral positivity (P2). However, a fearful but not happy (vs neutral) adaptor face decreased the P2 amplitudes to target faces, and this repetition suppression (RS) effect occurred when adaptor and target faces were of the same race but not when of different races. RS was observed on two late parietal/central positive activities to fearful/happy target faces, which, however, occurred regardless of whether adaptor and target faces were of the same or different races. Our findings suggest that early affective processing of fearful expressions may engage distinct neural activities for SR and OR faces.

The content you want is available to Zendy users.

Already have an account? Click here to sign in.

Having issues? You can contact us here

Accelerating Research