The processing of body expressions during emotional scenes: the modulation role of attachment styles

There is broad evidence indicating that contextual information influence the processing of emotional stimuli. However, attachment theory suggests that attachment styles contribute to the ways in which people perceive emotional events. To shed light on whether the processing of body expressions during different emotional scenes is modulated by attachment styles, attachment-related electrophysiological differences were measured using event-related potentials. For avoidantly attached group, our results suggested that larger N170 amplitudes were educed by neutral bodies than angry bodies, which was found only in neutral scene. Moreover, significant differences were found in P300 amplitudes in response to angry bodies compared with neutral ones only during angry scene. However, securely and anxiously attached individuals were associated with larger P300 amplitudes in response to angry bodies versus neutral ones in both emotional scenes. The current study highlights the characteristics of cognitive processing of attachment styles on body expressions during different emotional scenes, with the variation of N170 and P300 amplitude in different emotional scenes as the best example.