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Updated: Feb 9, 2026

Brain Imaging Investigation of the Impairing Effect of Emotion on Cognition
Published on: February 1, 2012
Emotional misattribution: Facial muscle responses partially mediate behavioral responses in the emotion
Michaela Rohr1, Timea Folyi1, Dirk Wentura1
1Department of Psychology, Saarland University, Saarbruecken, Germany.
Abstract:
There is ongoing debate regarding the degree to which, and the conditions under which, physiological, affect-related (i.e., embodied) processes contribute to emotion information processing. Whereas most studies focus on clearly visible and intentional processing conditions, the present study targeted this issue by studying the implicit processing of emotional (angry, fearful, joyful, neutral) faces in a masked emotion misattribution procedure. That is, participants had to categorize neutral-looking faces with regard to the allegedly felt emotion, which were preceded by a very briefly presented emotional expression. In addition to behavioral measures, facial muscle responses were obtained as an index of physiological, affect-related processes. Linear mixed-model mediation analyses confirmed that facial muscle responses partially mediated the behavioral responses to the masked primes in the misattribution task.
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