A selective emotional decision-making bias elicited by facial expressions
Open accessAbstract
Emotional and social information can sway otherwise rational decisions. For example, when participants decide between two faces that are probabilistically rewarded, they make biased choices that favor smiling relative to angry faces. This bias may arise because facial expressions evoke positive and negative emotional responses, which in turn may motivate social approach and avoidance. We tested a wide range of pictures that evoke emotions or convey social information, including animals, words, foods, a variety of scenes, and faces differing in trustworthiness or attractiveness, but we found only facial expressions biased decisions. Our results extend brain imaging and pharmacological findings, which suggest that a brain mechanism supporting social interaction may be involved. Facial expressions appear to exert special influence over this social interaction mechanism, one capable of biasing otherwise rational choices. These results illustrate that only specific types of emotional experiences can best sway our choices.
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Happy facial expressions can be treated as rewarding because they are desirable cues that trigger approach behavior.
“happy faces can be seen as desirable stimuli that elicit approach behaviors, and thus can be conceptualized as rewarding”
From A systematic review of fMRI reward paradigms used in studies of adolescents vs. adults: The impact of task design and implications for understanding neurodevelopment (2013) · cites this paper as Furl et al., 2012
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- Authors
- Furl, N., Gallagher, S., & Averbeck, B. B.
- Affiliations
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- ORCID
- Averbeck, Bruno B.
- Venue
- PLoS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2012-03-15
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- e33461
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3305313
- OpenAlex
- W1970057043
- Cited by
- 36
- References
- 32
- Citations by year
- 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 3
- FWCI
- 1.48
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, public-domain)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, public-domain)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute of Mental Health
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Keywords
- facial expressions, choice bias, social information, trustworthiness, attractiveness, emotional valence, rational decision-making
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Animals, Decision Making, Emotions, Facial Expression, Female, Food, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Learning, Male, Middle Aged, Models, Psychological, Reward, Trust, Young Adult
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