The effect of the context on the perception of facial emotional expressions

Individuals communicate with each other by using emotions. They understand and express emotions in a social environment. Faces are the utmost body part that provides individuals to express emotions. For instance; individuals use their gestures and facial movements to express a specific emotion. In everyday life, facial expressions are expressed in a specific context. Recent studies started to use the emotional face perception within context yet, the important role of contextualized emotional faces has not been examined sequentially (firstly presenting the context and then presenting the face) and the comparative role of instruction (“use” or “ignore” the context) on the impact of context on emotional faces are unclear. The aim of the study was to examine (i) whether context has an impact on emotional face perception (ii) whether they “ignore” the context when they are asked to ignore it (iii) whether individuals’ performance differs for each display condition (sequential, simultaneous) in the perception of contextual emotional faces. Participants were presented with context pictures (positive or negative) with emotional faces (happy or fearful) sequentially or simultaneously. The emotions of the faces were congruent and incongruent to the context pictures. The study revealed that; participants responded to contextualized emotional faces more accurately and faster in the congruent condition than incongruent condition, participants’ accuracy rates and reaction times did not differ when they were presented with the contextualized emotional faces sequentially or simultaneously, and in the congruent condition, overall participants responded better in the sequential than in the simultaneous condition, participants gave equally correct answers in the “use” and “ignore” conditions. Overall, these findings indicate the important role of context while perceiving emotional faces. Keywords: Context, Emotional faces, congruency, Display