Pretty crowds are happy crowds - The influence of attractiveness on mood perception. Psychological Research [Dataset]

DOI

Empirical findings predominantly support a happiness superiority effect in visual search and emotion categorization paradigms and reveal that social cues, like sex and race, moderate this advantage. A more recent study showed that the facial attribute attractiveness also influences the accuracy and speed of emotion perception. In the current study, we investigated whether the influence of attractiveness on emotion perception translates into a more general evaluation of moods when more than one emotional target is presented. In two experiments, we used the mood-of-the-crowd (MoC) task to investigate whether attractive crowds are perceived more positively compared to less attractive crowds. The task was to decide whether an array of faces included more angry or more happy faces. Furthermore, we recorded gaze movements to test the assumption that fixations on happy expressions occur more often in attractive crowds. Thirty-four participants took part in experiment 1 as well as in experiment 2. In both experiments, crowds presenting attractive faces were judged as being happy more frequently whereas the reverse pattern was found for unattractive crowds of faces. Moreover, participants were faster and more accurate when evaluating attractive crowds containing more happy faces as well as when judging unattractive crowds composed of more angry expressions. Additionally, in experiment 1, there were more fixations on happy compared to angry expressions in attractive crowds. Overall, the present findings support the assumption that attractiveness moderates emotion perception.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.11588/data/LYWYGN
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-020-01360-x
Metadata Access https://heidata.uni-heidelberg.de/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=doi:10.11588/data/LYWYGN
Provenance
Creator Mertens, Alica; Hepp, Johanna; Voss, Andreas; Hische, Amelie
Publisher heiDATA
Contributor Voss, Andreas
Publication Year 2020
Rights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
OpenAccess true
Contact Voss, Andreas (Institute of Psychology, Heidelberg University)
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Format application/zip
Size 79635327; 75023357
Version 1.1
Discipline Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture; Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture and Veterinary Medicine; Life Sciences; Social Sciences; Social and Behavioural Sciences; Soil Sciences