Jean Monéger (Université Paris Cité) : “Should I Stay or Should I Go? An Interactionist Exploration of Spontaneous Postural Behaviours Following Emotion Perception

Lundi 13 mai à 14h30 en salle 3035

Résumé :
Emotional facial expressions serve a communicative purpose, indicating behavioural intentions to others. Such social cues could prompt approach or avoidance of the perceived faces. However, the literature reports mixed findings with emotional expressions such as anger or fear being associated with both approach and avoidance. In this study (N = 151 participants), we investigated how facial characteristics (i.e., gaze direction) and individual traits (Big Five and Schizotypal personality) modulate behavioural responses to the perception of neutral, angry, fearful, and sad faces. We assessed approach and avoidance using force plates to investigate spontaneous backward and forward postural adjustments. Results show that angry and fearful faces elicit defensive responses characterized by backward body sway (i.e., avoidance). Although facial features further qualified those defensive reactions with deviated gazes in fear stimuli eliciting approach, we did not find conclusive evidence for the role of personality in these responses. We discuss the relevance of force plates in assessing spontaneous responses to social cues and suggest a framework for understanding emotional expression processing.