Page 79 - Emotions through the eyes of our closest living relatives- Exploring attentional and behavioral mechanisms
P. 79
Attention towards humans’ and bonobos’ emotion
results regarding the valence ratings, followed by the arousal ratings and last but not least, attentional biases, reflected in the results of the dot-probe tasks.
Overall, participants’ valence ratings supported our hypothesis: positive scenes
were given positive ratings and negative scenes negative ratings. Despite a similar
pattern in valence ratings between human and bonobo scenes (See Figure 2A), this
effect was amplified for the human scenes, particularly in child observers. This pattern demonstrates that expressions from conspecifics might indeed be easier to interpret
than expressions from another species (see also Fugate et al., 2010; Kret et al., 2018). 3 Interestingly, despite similarities in ratings between adults and children, we observed
differences in the magnitude of this effect. Specifically, compared to adults’ ratings,
the valence pattern was less pronounced in children. This finding is in accordance with
earlier literature, showing that children’s understanding of emotional expressions is
not fully developed yet (Widen, 2013). Interestingly, we found that children perceived
the photographs showing bonobos in distress positively rather than negatively. The
bared teeth display that was shown in scenes of the distress category is related to the
smile; the latter is a ritualized version of the former (Van Hooff, 1972). Importantly,
the meaning of the bared teeth display varies, and should be interpreted within the
context in which it occurs. This expression can signal fear, subordinance or affiliation
and the same is true in humans; a smile is not always a positive signal and can express
nervousness or even contempt (Kret & Straffon, 2018). However, taking into account
the context when it comes to interpreting these expressions may be something that
most adults have learned but that children have not yet learned to incorporate. This interpretation remains speculative as in the current study, the human positive scenes
showed smiles and laughter and these expressions never occurred in the negatively
valenced scenes. Another possibly is that children’s understanding of specific
emotions begins not with static images and the expressions visible in them, but with
the antecedents and behavioral consequences of the emotional situation.
Of all categories, self-scratch was perceived most negatively and play most positively. Within the adult sample we also included sex scenes and scenes showing aggression, which received extremely positive and negative ratings respectively. Male participants in particular evaluated the human sex scenes more positively than women. Previous literature has shown that gender differences in the pleasant dimension occur only for erotica, with more positive ratings for men than women (Bradley et al., 2001). Surprisingly, these differences were very minor in the current sample. For instance, in the study by Bradley et al. (2001), women rated images of “erotic couples” or “opposite sex erotica” roughly 65% positive and men 85%.
77