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Positive facial expressions are recognized faster than negative facial expressions, but why?

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Abstract

Three experiments examined the recognition speed advantage for happy faces. The results replicated earlier findings by showing that positive (happy) facial expressions were recognized faster than negative (disgusted or sad) facial expressions (Experiments 1 and 2). In addition, the results showed that this effect was evident even when low-level physical differences between positive and negative faces were controlled by using schematic faces (Experiment 2), and that the effect was not attributable to an artifact arising from facilitated recognition of a single feature in the happy faces (up-turned mouth line, Experiment 3). Together, these results suggest that the happy face advantage may reflect a higher-level asymmetry in the recognition and categorization of emotionally positive and negative signals.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Hannele Peuhu for her help with data collection. The study was supported by the Finnish Psychological Society (Anna S. Elonen grant) and the Academy of Finland (project # 50898).

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  1. Human Information Processing Laboratory, Department of Psychology, 33014, University of Tampere, Finland

    Jukka M. Leppänen & Jari K. Hietanen

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  1. Jukka M. Leppänen
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  2. Jari K. Hietanen
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Correspondence to Jukka M. Leppänen.

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Leppänen, J.M., Hietanen, J.K. Positive facial expressions are recognized faster than negative facial expressions, but why?. Psychological Research 69, 22–29 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-003-0157-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-003-0157-2

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