ORIGINAL PAPER
Cooperative and competitive motives enhance perceptual sensitivity to angry and happy facial expressions
Donald F.Sacco •Kurt Hugenberg
ÓSpringer Science+Business Media,LLC 2011
Abstract The interdependent motives of cooperation and competition are integral to adaptive social functioning.In three experiments,we provide novel evidence that both cooperation and competition goals enhance perceptual acu-ity for both angry and happy faces.Experiment 1found that both cooperative and competitive motives improve per-ceivers’ability to discriminate between genuine and deceptive smiles.Experiment 2revealed that both coopera-tive and competitive motives improve perceivers’perceptual sensitivity to subtle differences among happy and angry facial expressions.Finally,Experiment 3found that the motivated increase in perceptual acuity for happy and angry expressions allows perceivers to overcome the effects of visual noise,relative to unmotivated control participants.Collectively,these results provide novel evidence that the interdependent motives of cooperation and competition can attune visual perception,accentuating the subjectively experience
d signal strength of anger and happiness.Keywords Motivation ÁSocial perception ÁVisual perception ÁGoals
Introduction
Psychologists have endeavored to understand the implica-tions of cooperative and competitive motives for more than half of a century (e.g.,Deutsch 1949;May and Doob 1937;Deutsch 2000).Indeed,from those early theories through today,it is clear that cooperative and competitive motives
are necessary for functional social interaction;both coop-eration and competition are clearly interdependent motives ,with one’s own outcomes being affected by others’behavior,and vice versa (Kelley and Thibaut 1978).Given the long history of research and theory on the interdepen-dent motives of cooperation and competition,it is perhaps not a surprise that the precursors and effects of cooperation and competition have received extensive research atten-tion.Cooperative and competitive motives are well known to affect behaviors across multiple domains including intergroup relations (e.g.,Sherif et al.1954/1961;Sherif 1966),stereotyping (De Dreu et al.1995),negotiations (e.g.,De Dreu and Van Lange 1995),and social memory (Judd and Park 1988).
Despite this wealth of research on the behavioral and cognitive outcomes of cooperation and competition,to the authors’knowledge no research has investigated the percep-tual effects of these two interdependent motives.The present research seeks to address just this issue.In the current research we test the hypothesis that cooperative and competitive motives may sharpen perceptual acuity for motivationally-relevant stimuli,operationalized as happy and angry facial expressions.To this end,we first discuss both classic and recent literature regarding the effects of motives on percep-tion.We then discuss happy and angry facial expressions,which are universal non-verbal signals of cooperation and competition.Finally,we present three experiments that pro-vide novel evidence supporting the hypothesis that both cooperative and competitive motives can enhance perceptual acuity for both happy and angry facial expressions.The multiple effects of motivation on visual perception According to New Look theorists (e.g.,Bruner 1957;Bruner and Goodman 1947),values or motives can
D.F.Sacco (&)ÁK.Hugenberg
Department of Psychology,Miami University,Oxford,OH 45056,USA
e-mail:saccodf@muohio.edu
Motiv Emot
DOI 10.1007/s11031-011-9256-3
accentuate a stimulus,or certain stimulus properties,in the service of goal pursuit.Restated in more modern termi-nology,motives can lead selective attention to focus on motivationally-relevant stimuli or stimulus dimensions, while screening out motivationally-irrelevant stimuli or stimulus dimensions.Such accentuation should have two possible effects.First and consistent with extensive evi-dence,motives should make desired stimuli loom toward participants.Thus,characteristics of the stimulus can be shifted in motivationally-relevant directions,because crit-ical dimensions are perceptually accentuated or magnified. For example,insofar as the value of a coin is accentuated to an impoverished child,the size of the coin looms larger (Bruner and Goodman1947;see also Balcetis and Dunning 2010).Hills appear steeper when laden with a burdensome ,Bhalla and Proffitt1999).In this same vein,a difficult action such as walking across the campus quad in embarrassing attire appears more diffi,a longer distance)when forced,relative to when it is freely chosen (Balcetis and Dunning2007).Thus,the conclusion that specific motives can accentuate characteristics of motive-relevant ,the apparent size of a coin,the steepness of a hill)has received extensive empirical support.
Second,there is growing evidence that motivational states can also lead to increased perceptual acuity.Spe-cifically,the contrast gain ,Carrasco et al. 2004)argues that motivation can shift visual attention to a particular stimulus or stimulus dimension,thus enhancing sensitivity to variation on that dimension,while suppress-ing perceptual ,other irrelevant stimuli or stimulus dimensions).Empirically,there is clear evidence that selective attention enhances perceptual sensitivity (e.g.,Cameron et al.2002;Carrasco et al.2000).Moreover, motivation appears to powerfully determine attention. Motivationally-relevant stimuli both attract , O¨hman et al.2001)and are thereby perceived more acutely than are similar but motivationally-irrelevant , Crist et al.2001;Engelmann and Pessoa2007;Li et al. 2004;Pantoja et al.2007).
There is also evidence that attention can be shifted to different dimensions within a stimulus or across a stimulus dimension.Thus,for multi-dimensional stimuli,attention can shift from some dimensions to others,affecting how such stimuli are perceived and identified(see Nosofsky 1986).Importantly,perceiver motivation appears to cause such perceptual attunements to occur.In one recent example,Lim and Pessoa(2008)exposed participants to a series of fearful expressions,some shaded lightly in red and some in blue.On a between-participants basis,Lim and Pessoa manipulated which color shading(red vs.blue)was paired with aversive electric shocks.Partici
pants were then exposed to stimuli from fearful-to-neutral facial expression continua,some shaded blue,others shaded red,and were asked to categorize the stimuli by expression.Critically, perceivers showed enhanced sensitivity to fear signals,but only for faces shaded in the shock-paired color.Thus,when shocks were paired with blue-shaded faces during the learning phase,perceivers’sensitivity to fear in blue-sha-ded neutral-fear blends during the discrimination phase was enhanced(sensibly,the converse pattern was observed when red-shaded faces were paired with shocks).In other words,the motivational relevance of the shocks attuned perceivers to the expressive signal in the relevant stimuli.
It is this latter effect that we were interested in extending to the realm of interdependent social motives and facial expression sensitivity.Although much research has found that motives can lead to biased social perception,including biased facial expression ,Maner et al. 2005),the hypothesis that cooperative and competitive motives should enhance perceptual discrimination of motivationally-relevant stimuli is yet an open question. Specifically,we hypothesized that cooperative and com-petitive motives would attune perceivers to subtle distinc-tions among both happy and angry expressions.Because both happy and angry expressions are motivationally rel-evant for those in both cooperative and competitive moti-vational states,we hypothesized that both of these interdep
endent motives are likely to attune perceivers to the signals sent by happy and angry expressions.
Non-verbal signals of cooperation and competition Happiness and anger are of particular interest in this case because they are culturally universal signals of affiliation/ cooperation and dominance/competition,respectively (Ekman1989).Indeed,recent evidence suggests that smiles(and especially spontaneous or‘Duchenne’smiles) are genuine signals of cooperation and affiliative intent (e.g.,Brown and Moore2003;Krumhuber et al.2007; Niedenthal et al.2010).Similarly,anger is a universal signal of displeasure,signaling intent to dominate or con-flict with others(Knutson1996).Thus,if cooperative and competitive motives are to enhance perceptual acuity for motivationally-relevant stimuli,it seems reasonable that such effects should be reflected in enhanced perceptual acuity for happy and angry expressions.
It is important to note,however,that we hypothesize that both cooperative and competitive motives will improve perceptual acuity for both happy and angry expressions.Indeed,much of human behavior occurs in situations where both cooperative and competitive motives are deeply intertwined.In most ecological contexts the two motives go hand-in-hand,with successful compe-tition commonly being the result of successfully building a coalition and successfully outperforming competitors
Motiv Emot
(Deutsch2000).Moreover,successful collaboration is founded upon the ability to discriminate between those who are sending genuine signals of cooperation and those who are not—both competitive and cooperative situations demand high levels of interdependence with others.As such,knowing who is trustworthy or otherwise interested in affiliation is of critical ,Byrne and Whiten1988;Neuberg and Cottrell2008).Because suc-cessful cooperation and competition require accurately detecting signals of both cooperation and competition from others,we predict that both motives will enhance the acuity for both happy and angry facial expressions.
However,one sensible competing hypothesis is that cooperative and competitive motives will lead to an asym-metry in anger and happiness perception,based on the con-gruency between the motive and the expression.That is, perhaps cooperatively motivated people will be better at discriminating among happy expressions,whereas compet-itively motivated people will be better at discriminating among angry expressions.By focusing simultaneously on happy and angry expressions in the same experiment(see Experiments2and3),this also allows us to test the com-peting prediction that any motivated enhancements of per-ceptual acuity may be signal-specifi,cooperative motives enhance the perception of happiness but not anger).
The current research
We hypothesize that the interdependent motives of coop-eration and competition may enhance perceptual sensitivity to subtle differences amongst happy and angry facial expressions.Based on past research indicating that coop-erative and competitive motives are co-activated in many ecological contexts,and that success at both interdependent motives requires attention to signals of affiliation(smiles) and aggression(anger),we hypothesize that cooperatively and competitively motivated persons will be more per-ceptually sensitive when discriminating among both angry and happy facial expressions.
Across three experiments,we primed participants with a cooperative motive,a competitive motive,or induced no specific motive(control),and investigated how these motives influenced perceptual acuity for happy and/or angry expressions,as compared to the no-motive control condition. In Experiment1,participants distinguished between honest signals of approach(Duchenne smiles)and dishonest or ‘fake’smiles.We hypothesized that distinguishing between honest and dishonest signals of approach is motivationally-relevant for both cooperative and competitive motives; genuine and fake smiles are important signals of who is likely to affiliate(genuine)and defect(fake)in social exchanges (Brown and Moore2003;Krumhuber et al.2007).As such, both motives were predicted to e
nhance perceivers’ability to accurately discriminate between genuine and deceptive smiles,relative to no-motive controls.Experiment2 employed a same-different expression discrimination task in which perceivers determined whether two stimuli from happy-to-angry morph continua were identical or different. Because happiness and anger have implications for facili-tating and/or frustrating both cooperative and competitive motives,we predicted that both cooperative and competitive motives would attune perceivers to the nuanced differences between both angry and happy expressions,enhancing per-ceivers’task performance.Finally in Experiment3,we adopted a visual noise paradigm to directly investigate the extent to which cooperative and competitive motives accentuated the subjective signal strength of happy and angry expressions.Insofar as motives attune perceivers to critical dimensions of the stimuli while suppressing noise or distraction,we predicted interdependently-motivated (cooperative and competitive)perceivers would be better able to shrug off the effects of visual noise on perceptual acuity,as compared to no-motive controls.
Experiment1
In Experiment1,competitive,cooperative and no motive prime participants viewed a series of Duchenne(or‘gen-uine’)smiles,as well as a series of ,faked) smiles,and were asked to distinguish which smiles were ‘real,’genuine signals of affiliation,and which were faked. The Duchenn
e smile involves both zygomatic(around the mouth)and orbicularis oculi muscles(around the eyes), and occurs spontaneously as a result of enjoyment or true positive affect(Ekman1989).Deceptive smiles,however, involve only the zygomatic muscles;the orbicularis oculi muscles can be difficult to intentionally control.Research comparing Duchenne smiles with other types of smiles indicates that Duchenne smiles occur when individuals are actually enjoying themselves,whereas deceptive smiles occur more often when people are feigning enjoyment but are not actually experiencing such positive affect(Ekman et al.1988).As mentioned previously,genuine signals of affiliation and deception are important to fulfilling and frustrating both cooperative and competitive goals.We therefore predicted that both competitive and cooperative motives would enhance perceivers’ability to distinguish between these expressions,relative to control participants. Method
Participants and design
Twenty-eight introductory social psychology students(23 women;Mean age=20years)participated for partial
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course credit.Smile type(Duchenne vs.deceptive)was manipulated within-participants.Motives(cooper
ative vs. l)were manipulated between-par-ticipants.Neither participant nor target sex qualified any of the reported results and are not discussed further. Materials
Motive activation task We activated cooperative and competitive motives using a modified version of the well-validated Scrambled Sentence Task.We relied on this task across experiments because it has a strong empirical his-tory of being successfully implemented to elicit a variety of motives and ,impression formation goals: Chartrand and Bargh1996;social goal prime:Fitzsimons and Shah2008;spirituality mindset:Shariff and Norenza-yan2007;hostility and kindness:Srull and Wyer1979), including the successful activation of cooperation and competition ,Bargh et al.2001).Participants were presented with20separate‘scrambled sentences’on a page.Each scrambled sentence consisted of5words.In each5-word string,one word was a distracter word and the remaining four words could be reordered to create a grammatically valid English sentence.Participants were asked to write each of the unscrambled sentences on lines provided on the page.In the competition condition,14out of the20items included words related to , compete,win,rivalry).In the cooperation condition,14out of the20items included words related to , cooperate,collaborate,coalition).The remaining words in both conditions were unrelated to the two processing goals. In the control condition,all of the sentences and dropped word
s were unrelated to competition or cooperation.Pre-testing with a separate sample of participants,each of whom completed one of the three scrambled sentence tasks and an explicit mood measure,indicated no mood effects across the three types of primes(ps[.29).1
Facial expression stimuli The facial expression stimuli consisted of twenty(13male and7female targets)com-puterized movie clips,each approximately4s in length. Each clip displayed a target beginning with a neutral expression,then brieflyflashing a smile,andfinally returning to a neutral expression.Ten of the clips showed an individual displaying a genuine(Duchenne)smile;ten showed an individual showing a deceptive(fake)smile.Each of the20movie clips involved a different individual.The stimuli themselves were taken from the British Broadcasting Channel(BBC)website,and can be accessed via the fol-lowing URL:uk/science/humanbody/ mind/surveys/smiles/.Importantly,past research has suc-cessfully used these videos to assess individuals’ability to distinguish between genuine and fake ,Bernstein et al.2010,2008;Sacco et al.2009).
Procedure
Participants completed the tasks at individual desks in a large university classroom.Participants com
pleted two ostensibly unrelated tasks,thefirst a‘sentence processing task’(actually the motive activation task),and the latter a face perception task.Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three motive activation conditions and com-pleted the sentence unscramble for that condition using pencil and paper.cooperative
All participants then completed the smile decoding task. The experimenter used a computer projector to display each of the20expression stimuli in sequence on a screen at the front of the room.Each smile clip was shown once,in a random order.After each4s clip,the experimenter paused for5s to allow participants to indicate on a paper-and-pencil form whether they believed the stimulus involved a genuine smile or a deceptive smile.Specifically,partici-pants were instructed to write down the word‘‘fake’’if they believed the smile being displayed was a fake smile, or to write down the work‘‘real’’if they believed the smile being displayed was a real smile,indicating true positive affect.Following these experimental procedures,partici-pants completed a brief demographics form and were probed for suspicion.None of the participants indicated awareness of the relationship between the priming task and the subsequent face perception task.Finally,participants were thanked and debriefed.
Results and discussion
Of particular interest was whether motives enhanced per-ceivers’ability to make accurate discriminations between genuine and deceptive smiles.Because distinguishing between genuine and deceptive signals of affiliation is highly relevant for both cooperatively and competitively motivated perceivers,we predicted participants in both conditions would show an increase in sensitivity as com-pared to control condition participants.To test this hypothesis,signal detection indexes of sensitivity(d0)and bias(b)werefirst calculated,based upon participants’responses.Correctly categorizing a face as a genuine smile
1One participant was excluded from this analysis because of failure
to follow the experimental instructions.Retaining this participant
yields identical effects.
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was coded as a hit,whereas categorizing a fake smile as genuine was coded as a false alarm.2
To test the hypothesis that interdependent motives would enhance perceptual sensitivity,a one-way ANOVA wasfirst conducted on participants’sensitivity scores, yielding the predicted effect of motives
on sensitivity, F(2,25)=4.46,p=.02,partial eta squared=.263. Consistent with the hypotheses,planned contrasts(LSD tests)indicated that although sensitivity in the cooperation (d0=1.89)and competition conditions(d0=1.61)did not differ,p=.49,both the cooperation and competition participants showed significantly greater ability to dis-criminate between genuine and deceptive smiles relative to participants in the control,no-motive condition(d0=.73), ps\.05.3Thus,it appears that cooperative and competi-tive motives did indeed substantially improve perceivers’ability to makefine-grained perceptual distinctions among genuine and deceptive smiles.An identical one-way ANOVA conducted on participants’bias scores was non-significant,F(2,25)=1.04,p=.37,partial eta squared=.077,indicating that motives did not shift the criterion for making discriminations between real and deceptive smiles.
The results of this study provide novel evidence that motives can result in enhanced discrimination among motivationally-relevant stimuli;that is,motives to compete and cooperate enhanced perceivers’ability to discriminate between genuine and fake smiles.This is not simply the tendency to categorize more or fewer faces as genuine;the effect is not merely different decision ,no changes in criterion across the priming tasks).Nor are effects on sensitivity easily explicable by a response or concept-priming effect—a simple priming explanation would lead to effec
ts on response bias(Sanders1998). Instead,perceivers’ability to makefine-grained discrimi-nations between stimuli is enhanced.Moreover,this is equally true for both cooperative and competitive motives, a result which is inconsistent with pure valence explana-tions for the effect of cooperative and competitive moti-vational states on the perception of facial affect.Experiment2
Experiment1provided clear evidence that motives can enhance perceptual acuity,but it did so in a domain that was specific to positive affect and affiliation:distinguishing among smiles.Although we found equivalent effects for cooperatively and competitively motivated participants,we also hypothesize that the enhanced acuity created by these motives should be observed across both signals of affilia-tion and of dis affiliation;a prediction that could not be directly addressed in our initial study.As such,Experiment 2was designed to expand the previous results to both signals of affiliation/cooperation(happiness)and signals of hostility/competition(anger).
In Experiment2,participants madefine-grained per-ceptual distinctions among morphed facial expressions varying from very happy to very angry,with the hypothesis that both cooperative and competitive motives would enhance perceptual acuity across the expression spectrum. In this task,participants completed a series of trials in which they briefly viewed two facial expressions taken from happy-to-angry morph continua.On some trials, participants viewed identical ,two ima
ges of the same90%angry face),whereas on other trials participants viewed faces that differed by20%on the morph continuum (e.g.,a90%angry face and a70%angry face).Participants were asked to decide whether the expressions were iden-tical,or were subtly different.Thus,unlike Experiment1, the stimuli varied from smiling(affiliative)to angry(dis-affiliative).Of interest was whether inderdependent motives would enhance participants’perceptual acuity across the angry-to-happy spectrum.In other words,do both cooperative and competitive motives enhance per-ceivers’ability to makefine-grained perceptual distinctions among expressions signaling both cooperation(smiles)and competition(anger)?Because this study included expres-sions across the entire angry-to-happy continuum,it also allows us to directly test our hypothesis against an ‘asymmetry’hypothesis,which would predict that coop-erative motives would enhance acuity for happy but not angry expressions,whereas competitive motives would enhance acuity for angry but not happy expressions. Method
Participants and design
Eighty introductory psychology undergraduate students(62 women;mean age=18.9years)participated for partial course credit.Participants were randomly assigned to one of three motive priming conditions:cooperative prime, competitive prime,or no prime control condition(identical to Study1).Mo
rph ,expression level)was
2As is common in signal detection analyses,adjustments to the data were made in all experiments to address the problem of empty cells: 0%was adjusted to5and100%was adjusted to95%.These adjustments were infrequent and alternate adjustments yield nearly identical results.
3In both Experiments1and3,the only experiments in which d0 could be calculated,we conducted one-sample t tests across each of the motive conditions to determine whether participants’d0scores were significantly above chance levels.Across all of the conditions, participants’sensitivity as reflected in d0scores were significantly greater than chance(all p s\.05except the control condition in Experiment1,p=.07,which was marginally greater than chance). Motiv Emot
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