"Sentio ergo est": Unmasking the psychological realities of emotional misperception.

Summary

When people mistakenly report seeing a briefly presented, backward-masked emotional face that was not actually shown, these false-positive responses are linked to heightened physiological arousal before and after the trial, high confidence in the erroneous perception, and ratings of valence and arousal that match the type of face misperceived. These effects are strongest for fearful faces. The findings suggest a mechanism for partial, self-encapsulated emotional-experiential apperception and a possible fear-primacy socio-emotional response module that operates under visual ambiguity and high psychophysiological arousal.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Perception is an important aspect of our personal lives, interpersonal interactions and professional activities and performance. A large body of psychological research has been dedicated to exploring how perception happens, whether and when it involves conscious awareness and what are the physiological correlates, such as skin-conductance and heart-rate responses, that occur when we perceive particularly emotional elicitors. A more recent and less explored question in psychological science is how and when misperception happens, and what are the physiological characteristics of the misperception of emotion. Therefore, in the current study, for the first time in relevant research, we recruited participants using trial-contour power calculations for false-positive responses, such as incorrectly reporting that a brief backward masked face was presented and thoroughly explored these responses. We reported that false-positive responses for backward masked emotional faces were characterised by pre-trial arousal, and post-trial arousal increases, high confidence ratings, and corresponding to stimulus-type misperception valence and arousal participant ratings. These outcomes were most pronounced for false-positive responses for fearful faces. Based on these findings, we discussed the possibility of a mechanism for partial self-encapsulated emotional-experiential apperception and the possibility of a fear primacy socio-emotional response module during combined visual ambiguity and high psychophysiological arousal.