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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Hum. Neurosci.
Sec. Motor Neuroscience
Volume 18 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2024.1411246
This article is part of the Research Topic Postural Control Priorities and Effective Motor Learning View all articles

Stepping into emotions: Investigating the effect of angry and fearful faces on forward stepping and quiet stance

Provisionally accepted
Angélique Lebert Angélique Lebert 1,2*Oscar Vilarroya Oscar Vilarroya 1,2John Stins John Stins 3
  • 1 Department of Psychiatry and Forensic Medicine, School of Medicine, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
  • 2 Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM), Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
  • 3 Department of Human Movement Sciences, Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences, VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Netherlands

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Facial expressions conveying an emotion may affect social interactions, such as approach-or avoidance-related behaviors. A specific facial feature is the gaze direction. An emotional facial expression such as anger will elicit distinct behavioral tendencies, depending on whether the angry gaze is directed toward the onlooker, or in a different direction. We tested whether facial expressions of anger and fear, combined with direct or averted gaze, elicit approachor avoidance tendencies, using a go/no-go variant of the whole-body stepping task.Method: Healthy adults stood on a force plate, recording the center of pressure (COP).Participants were presented with angry or fearful faces; either with direct or averted gaze.Participants had to identify the emotion, and -depending on instructions-either make a single step forward, or remain in a quiet stance. From the COP of the forward steps, we derived parameters such as reaction time and step size. From the quiet standing trials we derived parameters of postural sway, indicative of postural 'freeze'. We used analysis of variance to analyse the outcomes.Results and Discussion: First, we found that steps were initiated faster with angry faces than with fearful faces, in line with existing literature. Second, we did not observe a significant effect of gaze direction. Forward steps with direct and averted gaze had similar COP characteristics. Finally, we had expected to find freeze (postural immobility) with fearful faces, but this was also not observed. We discuss various explanations for the finding, and implications for research into the motoric grounding of social interactions.

    Keywords: emotion, faces, Gaze Direction, gait initiation, quiet stance, Posture, Approach-avoidance motivation

    Received: 02 Apr 2024; Accepted: 15 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Lebert, Vilarroya and Stins. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Angélique Lebert, Department of Psychiatry and Forensic Medicine, School of Medicine, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, 08193, Catalonia, Spain

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.