PeeledPair

The morning pictures are of us eating bagels and lox, with a special cream cheese recipe and pickled cucumber. The drink you see is freshly squeezed papaya and strawberry juice mixed with a splash of grand marnier, and a healthy helping of champagne. For lunch, we had a spinach salad with avocado, red onion, cilantro, shrimp, topped by a homemade white wine vinaigrette. For drinks, I whipped up a couple of Caravello Cosmopolitans. Yum!

I’m presenting the following abstract at the annual meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research in Savannah, GA this October. The abstract describes the first project I worked on at my part-time job in Piotr Winkielman’s lab at UCSD.

The Impact of Unconscious Facial Expressions on Consumption Behavior Involves Changes in Positive Affect: Evidence from EMG and Appetitive Reflex-Modulation
Starr, M.J., Lin, J., Winkielman, P.

Subliminally presented affective faces influence appetitive behavior, such as consumption of a novel drink. However, we do not know whether this effect is accompanied by a genuine change in an affective state. In the current study, we tested the engagement of appetitive and defensive systems by measuring the influence of masked subliminal happy and angry faces on physiology, beverage consumption, and mood ratings. We found a significant valence effect on an appetitive reflex (the post-auricular muscle response) and zygomaticus activity, with responses greater after happy than angry faces. Behaviorally, happy faces increased consumption compared to angry, though this effect was limited in time. The effects on the measures of the defensive system (startle blink and corrugator activity) were non-significant. Despite significant changes in physiological and behavioral measures of appetitive response, mood ratings (PANAS) revealed no significant changes in conscious feelings. These results suggest that unconscious affective stimuli can influence consumption behavior by inducing a genuine, if unfelt, change in positive affect.