Implicit Motives Modulate Attentional Orienting to Facial Expressions of Emotion

We conducted two studies (Ns=52 and 60) to test the notion that the incentive salience of facial expressions of emotion (FEE) is a joint function of perceivers’ implicit needs for power and affiliation and the FEE’s meaning as a dominance or affiliation signal. We used a variant of the dot-probe task (Mogg & Bradley, 1999a) to measure attentional orienting. Joy, anger, surprise, and neutral FEEs were presented for 12, 116, and 231 ms with backward masking. Implicit motiveswere assessedwith a Picture Story Exercise. We found that power-motivated individuals orient their attention towards faces signaling low dominance, but away from faces that signal high dominance, and (b) that affiliationmotivated individuals show vigilance for faces signaling low affiliation (rejection) and, to a lesser extent, orient attention towards faces signaling high affiliation (acceptance).