Facial Expression Processing Varies with Political Affiliation

Abstract

Conservative political beliefs have been linked to heightened stress reactivity and protective cognitive biases. Using a facial discrimination task designed to measure perceptions of threat (vs. non threat) and dominance (vs. submissiveness), I show that Republicans demonstrate a greater tendency to interpret ambiguous facial stimuli as expressing more threatening and more dominant emotions than do Democrats. The findings suggest the political ideology may be associated with basic social perceptual sensitivities.