The Facial Features That Induce University Students’ Aggressive Judgment And Emotional Priming Conditions

In actual social interaction,people’s aggressive judgments based on other people’s faces are extremely rapid and highly consistent,even when the facial expression is neutral.A large number of studies have shown that high facial width-to-height ratio are more likely to induce individual aggressive judgment than low facial width-to-height ratio.Facial width-to-height ratio is a global feature of the face,and there are few studies on the local features of the face.In addition,studies have shown that subliminal emotional priming can affect individuals’ trait judgment on neutral faces,but previous studies have focused on the valence of the priming emotion or a specific emotion.Therefore,this study takes Asian faces as the judgment object,and the first study uses the dual comparison method to explore the face characteristics that induce university students’ aggressive judgment on neutral faces.After clarifying the specific characteristics,the second study uses the emotional priming paradigm to investigate which emotions can induce university students’ aggressive judgment of neutral faces under supraliminal and subliminal priming conditions.In the first study,the dual comparison method was used to present the faces with low brow ridge,shallow chin,nostrils wide nose,long nose,high forehead width-to-height ratio,high cheekbones,thick lips,concave jawline and gaunt face one by one,so that the subjects were forced to select a more aggressive face from the two faces presented at the same time.According to the selection frequency of faces and the response time of participants to select faces,we investigated the face characteristics that induce university students’ aggressive judgment.The results showed that the highest selection frequency was the face with high forehead width-to-height ratio,and its selection frequency was significantly higher than the other eight faces.Followed by gaunt face,high cheekbones,low brow ridge and long nose face.The faces with the lowest selection frequency were nostrils wide nose,shallow chin,concave jawline and thick lips.There is no significant difference in the frequency of face selection between men and women.On the basis of the aggressive faces obtained in the first study,the second study uses the emotional priming paradigm,uses the facial expression emoji picture to start the subjects’ emotions,and then lets the subjects score the aggressive faces obtained in the first study.According to the scores of the subjects,we investigated the effects of five emotions of anger,disgust,fear,sadness and pleasure on the aggressive judgment of university students under the two priming conditions of supraliminal and subliminal.The results showed that the main effect of emotional valence was significant.The score of aggression under negative emotion priming was significantly higher than that under positive emotion priming.In negative emotions,anger primed subjects had the highest aggression score,which was significantly higher than disgust,fear and sadness.The main effect of priming condition was not significant.The interaction between emotional valence and priming conditions was significant.In the supraliminal priming condition,the aggression score of subjects under negative emotion priming was significantly higher than that of positive emotion;under the subliminal priming condition,there was no significant difference in the aggressive scores of the subjects under positive and negative emotional priming.In summary,the study reached the following conclusions:(1)High forehead width-to-height ratio is most likely to induce university students to judge the aggressiveness of neutral faces.This was followed by gaunt face,high cheekbones,low brow ridge and long nose.(2)There is no gender difference when neutral faces induce university students’ aggressive judgment.(3)Among the four common negative emotions of anger,sadness,fear and disgust,anger is the most likely to induce university students’ aggressive judgment on neutral faces.(4)At the conscious level,negative emotions induce higher aggressive judgment than positive emotions,but at the unconscious level,both negative and positive emotions induce higher aggressive judgment.