Schedule of Events | Search Abstracts | Invited Symposia | Symposia | Rising Stars | Poster Sessions | Data Blitz

Face Your Feelings: A higher burden of unattended negative facial stimuli may increase startle arousal.

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 7, 2026, 3:00 – 5:00 pm PST, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms

Daria Ghazi¹ (daria.ghazi@bruins.belmont.edu), Robiya Akhmedova², Aram Akbari³, Kaitlyn Ziebell⁴, Carole Scherling⁵; ¹Belmont University, Nashville, Tennessee

Attentional biases towards emotional stimuli shape physiological reactivity, with a high sensitivity to facial cues (Dandeneau & Baldwin, 2004; Bublatzky, 2019). The current study investigated the effects of emotional face-searches on a subsequent startle reactivity. During training, 32 undergraduates completed a 4x4 matrix, prompted to locate a single face-type among 15 distractors (smile-among-frowns or frowns-among-smiles). After testing, participants listened to white noise for a total duration of 5 minutes, with an auditory startle (105dB) injected at 2 minutes. Outcome variables included matrix reaction-times and continuous measures of skin conductance (SC), eye electromyography, and heart rate. Participants completed the Rosenberg Self-Esteem and Beck Anxiety scales, as common modulators of attentional bias. Physiological measures did not reflect hypotheses suggesting potential find-frown modulations on startle reactivity and recovery. All measures except SC were non-significant, with higher startle SC for find-smile (U=59.00, p=0.048). While this seems counterintuitive to literature indicating higher sympathetic arousal with negative-exposure (Reagh & Knight, 2013), find-smile cohorts were exposed to higher negative burdens (15 frowns + 1 smile), which may explain higher arousal. Meanwhile, self-esteem and anxiety did not modulate reactivity. Matrix outcomes showed faster reaction times for find-smile matrices (t(32)=-2.602 , p=0.014), likely influenced by morphological distinctness of smiles resulting in a pop-out effect (Theobald, 2009). In conclusion, attentional-training can influence sympathetic reactivity to sudden stressors, but it may be most modulated by stimuli-type burden rather than conscious search focus. This research supports that passive exposure to emotional stimuli can influence attentional bias, and thereby physiological reactivity.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Emotional responding