The Influence Of Facial Expressions On Temporal Perception

Emotions can affect cognitive activities. Previous studies have shown that, compared with thepositive emotion, individuals tend to make priority response to negative emotions. This researchmainly used three facial expressions (happy, angry, and neutral) pictures as the experimental materials, andtemporal order judgment paradigm (temporal order judgment, TOJ), through two experiments, toexamine the facial expressions of the effect of temporal perception systematically, to test the negativebias theory.In this study, a pair of (two) facial pictures were presented either simultaneously, or separated byvarying stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA：-100ms,-34ms,-17ms,17ms,34ms,100ms)，and askedparticipants to judge two pictures appearing time sequence. In the Experiment1, we asked subjects onlyhad to judge which face appeared first (right or left), and were not necessary to process the emotioncarried by the facial picture. In the Experiment2, we changed the way of responses of subjects, and theywere asked to judge which kind of mood came first.The results of Experiment1and2consistently found that, Facial affect influenced judgmentsof temporal order at short SOA, but not at the longest SOA, relative to the neutral emotional facialexpressions, individuals are more likely to judge the emotional facial expressions first present, andrelative to the negative emotion expression, individuals are more likely to judge the positive facialexpression first present.Under the condition of this research, we can draw the following conclusions:Facial expressions have a significant influence on temporal perception, but do not support the view of the negative bias theory.