The Facilitated Processing of Threatening Faces: An ERP Analysis.
Open accessAbstract
Threatening, friendly, and neutral faces were presented to test the hypothesis of the facilitated perceptual processing of threatening faces. Dense sensor event-related brain potentials were measured while subjects viewed facial stimuli. Subjects had no explicit task for emotional categorization of the faces. Assessing early perceptual stimulus processing, threatening faces elicited an early posterior negativity compared with nonthreatening neutral or friendly expressions. Moreover, at later stages of stimulus processing, facial threat also elicited augmented late positive potentials relative to the other facial expressions, indicating the more elaborate perceptual analysis of these stimuli. Taken together, these data demonstrate the facilitated perceptual processing of threatening faces. Results are discussed within the context of an evolved module of fear (A. Ohman & S. Mineka, 2001).
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The LPP has been shown sensitive to biologically relevant information, such as the presentation of threatening information.
“which has been shown sensitive to biologically relevant information, such as the presentation of threatening information33–36”
From Event-related potentials of automatic imitation are modulated by ethnicity during stimulus processing, but not during motor execution (2018) · cites this paper as [35]
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- Authors
- Schupp, H. T., Öhman, A., Junghöfer, M., Weike, A. I., Stockburger, J., & Hamm, A. O.
- Affiliations
- Universität Greifswald (DE)
- Karolinska Institutet (SE)
- University of Konstanz (DE)
- Venue
- Emotion
- Published
- 2004
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 189-200
- ISSN
- 1528-3542 (ISSN-L)
- 1931-1516
- OpenAlex
- W2112722284
- Cited by
- 830
- References
- 70
- Citations by year
- 2026: 26 · 2025: 26 · 2024: 38 · 2023: 37 · 2022: 45 · 2021: 36 · 2020: 50 · 2019: 50 · 2018: 46 · 2017: 54 · 2016: 38 · 2015: 46 · 2014: 55 · 2013: 46 · 2012: 41
- FWCI
- 9.40
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- nbn-resolving.de
- Locations
- Emotion (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- KOPS (University of Konstanz) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- threatening faces, event-related potentials, early posterior negativity, late positive potential, facial expressions, emotional face processing
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Affect, Cues, Discrimination, Psychological, Evoked Potentials, Facial Expression, Female, Humans, Functional Laterality, Male, Occipital Lobe, Random Allocation, Temporal Lobe, Visual Perception
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