Walk to me when I smile, step back when I’m angry: emotional faces modulate whole-body approach–avoidance behaviors

Facial expressions are potent social cues that can induce behavioral dispositions, such as approach–avoidance tendencies. We studied these tendencies by asking participants to make whole-body forward (approach) or backward (avoidance) steps on a force plate in response to the valence of social cues (happy or angry faces) under affect-congruent and incongruent mappings. Posturographic parameters of the steps related to automatic stimulus evaluation, step initiation (reaction time), and step execution were determined and analyzed as a function of stimulus valence and stimulus–response mapping. The main result was that participants needed more time to initiate a forward step towards an angry face than towards a smiling face (which is evidence of a congruency effect), but with backward steps, this difference failed to reach significance. We also found a reduction in spontaneous body sway prior to the step with the incongruent mapping. The results provide a crucial empirical link between theories of socially induced action tendencies and theories of postural control and suggest a motoric basis for socially guided motivated behavior.

• Publication year

  2011

• Venue

  Experimental Brain Research

• Publication date

  2011-06-23

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1007/s00221-011-2767-zPMID 21698468PMCID 3133774
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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