Social contacts and loneliness affect the own age bias for emotional faces

Adriana Patrizia Gonzalez Pizzio; Alla Yankouskaya; Guido Alessandri; Sancho Loreto; Anna Pecchinenda

doi:10.1038/s41598-022-20220-9

Social contacts and loneliness affect the own age bias for emotional faces

Sci Rep. 2022 Sep 27;12(1):16134. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-20220-9.

Authors

Adriana Patrizia Gonzalez Pizzio¹, Alla Yankouskaya², Guido Alessandri³, Sancho Loreto², Anna Pecchinenda^{4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Program in Behavioural Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
² Department of Psychology, Bournemouth University, Poole, UK.
³ Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
⁴ Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy. anna.pecchinenda@uniroma1.it.
⁵ Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, IRCCS Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy. anna.pecchinenda@uniroma1.it.

Abstract

Individuals are better at recognizing faces of their own age group (Own Age Bias) but it is unclear whether this bias occurs also for emotional faces and to what extent is affected by loneliness. Young individuals (N = 235) completed an age categorization task on faces of young and old individuals showing neutral, happy, and angry expressions. After a filler task, they categorized as seen or novel the original set of faces intermixed with a new set. Findings showed an Own Age Bias for novel young faces but no evidence that emotion eliminates it. Recognition accuracy was better for emotional faces, but the two factors did not interact. Importantly, low loneliness was linked to an Own Age Bias for novel happy faces. These findings are discussed in the context of current theoretical accounts of the Own Age Bias and of the effects of loneliness on attention and memory.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Anger
Attention
Emotions*
Facial Expression
Humans
Loneliness*
Recognition, Psychology