abstract Florian Bublatzky

Florian Bublatzky (Clinical and Biological Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Mannheim, Germany)

The social face: Impact of personal relevance on face perception

The human face represents a key aspect for social communication. It conveys information about the identity, emotional states, and intentions of other people, which are essential cues that help discriminate friendly and hostile social situations. Such information is depicted, for instance, within the face (e.g., visual appearance), or based on what we have explicitly learned about a person (e.g., person knowledge). This talk will summarize a series of studies addressing the mutual impact of emotional facial expression (happy, neutral, and angry), structural features (face orientation in triadic group situations), and social learning (relevance instructions) on electrocortical processing, physiological responding, and behavioral measures. In sum, perceived personal relevance to an observer – conveyed by facial expression, face direction, and social learning – may amplify face and person perception within social settings.