PPIG: Philosophy, Psychology, and Informatics Group

Presenter: Matthew Parrott (KCL)

Title: How to Make Friends by Ignoring Faces

Abstract: In this talk, we shall explore some evidence that shows experiencing childhood abuse affects the way a person responds to angry faces, specifically by making a person hyper-attentive to angry faces. This is viewed by development psychologists as a kind of adaptive response to an abusive or hostile environment. However, it is widely held that in a non-abusive environment, this same hypersensitivity puts one at greater risk of developing a psychiatric disorder. But why would that be true?  Why would paying more attention to angry faces have this consequence? We shall briefly explore three potential explanations presented by McCrory and Viding (2015). I shall propose a way of developing one of these, but in a different direction than the one McCrory and Viding suggest. Whereas, their approach holds that angry faces reliably indicate the presence of a threat, I shall argue that this is true only in hostile environments. In ordinary environments, angry faces are not indicative of threat, which, I shall claim, is why one cannot visually discriminate threatening people on the basis of angry facial expressions. I shall also argue that for this reason fostering pro-social, beneficial relationships requires one to pay little attention to angry faces.