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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 9, 2025

Development of a Gaze-Contingent Display Framework Designed for Perceptual and Oculomotor Research with Simulated Central Vision Loss

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The anger superiority effect revisited: a visual crowding task.

Mingliang Gong^1,2, L James Smart²

¹School of Psychology, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, People's Republic of China.

Cognition & Emotion

|September 14, 2020

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

The anger superiority effect (ASE) in peripheral vision is not constant. It depends on whether surrounding faces are neutral or emotional, and the specific visual search task demands.

Keywords:

Anger superiority effect cross culture face-in-the crowd task demands visual crowding visual periphery

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Visual Perception
Social Neuroscience

Background:

The anger superiority effect (ASE) describes the enhanced detection of angry faces over neutral or happy faces in visual search tasks.
Previous research presents conflicting findings regarding the ASE, particularly in peripheral vision.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the anger superiority effect (ASE) in the visual periphery using a visual crowding paradigm.
To examine how visual crowding and the emotional expression of distractor faces influence the detection of angry versus happy target faces.

Main Methods:

Participants performed a visual search task, identifying target faces as happy or angry.
Target faces were presented either alone (uncrowded) or surrounded by four neutral or emotional distractor faces (crowded condition).
The study included Caucasian and East Asian participants to assess cross-cultural consistency.

Main Results:

An ASE was observed when angry faces were crowded by neutral distractors.
This anger superiority vanished when the target face was crowded by emotional distractors or presented alone.
The findings were consistent across Caucasian and East Asian participants.

Conclusions:

The anger superiority effect (ASE) in peripheral vision is modulated by visual crowding and the emotional content of surrounding distractors.
Task demands, specifically those induced by visual crowding, play a critical role in the manifestation of the ASE.
The observed effect demonstrates robustness and cross-cultural consistency.