The Effect Of Emotional Response Bias On The Ensemble Coding Of Facial Emotions

Ensemble encoding refers to the ability of an individual to rapidly and accurately perceive and compute a set of similar objects or group mean statistics.Ensemble encoding is not only present at the low sensory level such as lines and shapes,but also in complex perceptual tasks involving faces and scenes.Earlier research has found that individuals can rapidly and accurately perceive whole facial emotion statistics by encoding the emotions of multiple emotional faces.On the other hand,emotional faces,as a special type of emotional carrier,when perceived by an individual,may be classified in a way that is consistent with their own internal needs under the influence of certain emotional preferences.Studies have shown that individuals have different response biases to different emotional stimuli,such as avoiding unpleasant and threatening stimuli and approaching pleasant stimuli,this response bias is termed the emotional response bias(or "approach-avoidance" consistency effect).Previous research on facial emotions has often discusses ensemble encoding of face emotions and emotional response biases separately,therefore,it is currently unclear whether emotional response biases affect an individual’s ensemble encoding of facial emotions.To address this issue,this study used behavioral experiments to combine emotion response bias inducement tasks with whole-face emotion coding tasks to examine whether response bias affects an individual’s accuracy of ensemble face emotion coding.If a bias indeed exists,the study will further examine whether this bias could be altered through emotion coping strategies(such as automated emotion regulation and seeking social support).This study consisted of two phases and three experiments in total.Phase 1(including experiment 1)primarily examined the impact of emotional response biases on ensemble facial emotion coding,and whether emotional stimulus response bias affected an individual’s accurate perception of facial emotions.Phase 2(including experiments 2 and 3)added emotional coping strategy to the study design,and investigated whether two different emotion coping strategies,namely,cognitive reappraisal and social support,could mitigate the impact of emotional response biases on ensemble facial emotion coding.Among them,experiment 2 examines the intervention effect of automated cognitive reassessment strategy,and experiment 3 tests the intervention effect of social support strategy.Experiment 1 utilized a within-subject experimental design of 2(emotional face type:positive face/ negative face)x 2(facial emotional presentation: approach/ avoidance).Similar to previous studies on this topic,the experiment presented positive or negative emotional faces gradually “from big to small” or “from small to big” to create a visual effect of gradually approaching or avoiding.The study then tested whether emotional response biases affected a subject’s accuracy of whole-face emotion coding.The results of experiment1 revealed that under the condition of negative emotional faces,avoidance conditions showed better ensemble encoding accuracy than approach conditions.However,under the condition of positive emotional faces,there were no significant differences between approach and avoidance conditions.These results indicate that emotional response biases indeed affect an individual’s ensemble facial emotion coding,but this impact is only present in the perceptual context of perceiving negative emotional faces.Experiment 2 and 3 added an emotion coping process prior to task flow of experiment one to investigate whether emotion coping strategies such as cognitive reappraisal and social support could reduce emotional response bias and its impact on ensemble facial emotion coding.Experiment 2 utilized a mixed experimental design of 2(experimental group:initiation group/ control group)x 2(facial emotional presentation: approach/ avoidance).Compared to the control group who worked on organizing neutral words,the start group regulated emotions through organizing sentences containing emotion regulation words.The results of experiment 2 indicate that the control group completely replicated the results of experiment 1 under the perceptual context of negative emotional faces,in which there was a significant difference in ensemble encoding accuracy between two facial emotional presentation methods.However,there was no significant difference in ensemble encoding accuracy between the two facial emotional presentation methods in the start group,which proved that cognitive reappraisal could reduce individual avoidance of negative emotion and weaken the impact of emotional response biases on ensemble facial emotion coding.Experiment 3 utilized a mixed experimental design of 2(experimental group: close friend group/ stranger group)x 2(facial emotional presentation: approach/ avoidance).Experiment3 tested the effects of social support strategies on emotional response bias.The experimental group consisted of participants accompanied by a close companion,while the strangers’ group included participants with a stranger as a companion.The results of experiment 3 are similar to experiment 2.Differences in ensemble encoding accuracy between approach and avoidance conditions were significant in the strangers’ group,but there were no significant differences between approach and avoidance conditions in the close friends’ group.The results of experiment 3 indicate that social support may reduce individual avoidance of negative emotions,thereby weakening emotional response biases’ impact on ensemble facial emotion coding.In summary,this study reveals that(1)emotional response biases induced by gradual approach or avoidance of multiple emotional faces indeed affects an individual’s ensemble face emotion coding process,but this impact only happens in the perceptual context of negative emotional face perception.(2)Emotion coping strategies,such as cognitive reappraisal and social support,can reduce individual avoidance of negative emotions and weaken the impact of emotional response biases on ensemble facial emotion coding accuracy.