It occurs after all: Attentional bias towards happy faces in the dot-probe task

Many studies have shown that not only threatening but also positive stimuli capture visual attention. However, in the dot-probe task, a common paradigm to assess attention to emotional stimuli, usually no bias towards happy faces occurs. Here, we investigated whether such a bias can occur and, if so, under which conditions. In Experiment 1, we investigated whether the bias is contingent on the simultaneous presentation of distractor stimuli with the targets. Participants performed a dot-probe task with either stand-alone targets or targets that were accompanied by distractors. We found an attentional bias towards happy faces that was not moderated by target type. To rule out perceptual low-level confounds as the cause of the bias towards happy faces, Experiments 2a and 2b comprised dot-probe tasks with inverted face cues. No attentional bias towards inverted happy faces occurred. In Experiment 3, we investigated whether a bias towards happy faces is contingent on a social-processing mode. Participants performed a dot-probe task with socially meaningful (schematic faces) or socially meaningless (scrambled schematic faces) targets. Again, a bias towards happy faces, which was not moderated by target type, occurred. In Experiment 4, we investigated the attentional bias towards happy faces when another highly relevant expression was present. Participants performed a dot-probe task with both happy and angry face cues. A significant attentional bias towards emotional faces occurred that did not differ between both cue emotions. These results suggest that happy faces are sufficiently relevant for observers to capture attention in the dot-probe task.