Ottmar V Lipp
Biographic Data
| ID | 2750594 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ottmar V Lipp |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ottmar V |
| FAMILY NAME | Lipp |
| SIGNATURE | LIPP O V |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Queensland |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6734-8608 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 45 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
What people say, but not what they love or hate, affects speeded emotional expression recognition
Pleasant facial expressions, like happiness, are recognised faster than negative expressions such as anger or fear. The size of this happy face advantage depends on facial social category cues (larger for female, young or ethnic ingroup faces), facial attractiveness (larger for attractive faces), and person knowledge (larger for persons believed to be of good character). These findings are best explained by the evaluative congruence account, whic…
A data-informed multidimensional composite score for stress assessment
Occupations such as the military, emergency responders, and athletes demand acute physical, cognitive and psychosocial effort. Individuals in these roles face task-specific stressors, including extreme heat, sustained mental focus and performance under social pressure, resulting in variable stress responses. Comparing individual stress responses is challenging due to the complex physiological, cognitive, and emotional interactions. This study pre…
The positive facial expression advantage
Past research has shown that facial expressions of happiness are recognized faster than negative expressions such as anger. This happy face advantage is influenced by facial social category cues; it is larger for faces that are female, young, or represent an ethnic ingroup. The phenomenon of the happy face advantage as well as the influence of social cues on recognition of happy expressions is best explained by the evaluative congruence account. …
Participant mood modulates attention and eye movements in visual search for emotional faces
Research on visual search for emotional faces has yielded discrepant results, with some studies reporting advantages for angry faces (anger superiority effect) and others reporting a happy face advantage (happiness superiority effect). Researchers have sought to explain these phenomena through an emotional factors account : attributing the anger superiority effect to an innate threat detector, and the happiness superiority effect to a positivity …
Emotion malleability beliefs prompt cognitive reappraisal
Emotion malleability beliefs (EMB) have been shown to be a potential predictor of cognitive reappraisal use. However, the nature of the relationship between EMB and cognitive reappraisal use remains unclear. The present study manipulated EMB with an online intervention and measured participants' EMB and cognitive reappraisal before the intervention as well as at three follow-ups. Eighty-six late adolescents who scored in the bottom 50% on EMB in …
Examining conceptual generalisation after acquisition, extinction, and reinstatement in evaluative conditioning
In evaluative conditioning, a neutral conditional stimulus (CS) acquires the valence of a pleasant or unpleasant unconditional stimulus (US) after the CS and US are paired (acquisition). Valence acquired by the CS can generalise to other stimuli from the same category. Presenting the CS alone can reduce evaluative conditioning (extinction), but evaluations can return after the US is presented alone (reinstatement). The current research investigat…
The face pareidolia illusion drives a happy face advantage that is dependent on perceived gender
The happy face advantage, the faster recognition of happy than of negative, angry or fearful, emotional expressions, has been reliably found and is modulated by social category cues, such as perceived gender, that is, is larger on female than on male faces. In this study, we tested whether this pattern of results is unique to human faces by investigating whether ambient examples of face pareidolia can also evoke a happy face advantage that is dep…
Emotional scenes as context in emotional expression recognition
Emotion recognition is influenced by contextual information such as social category cues or background scenes. However, past studies yielded mixed findings regarding whether broad valence or specific emotion matches drive context effects and how multiple sources of contextual information may influence emotion recognition. To address these questions, participants were asked to categorize expressions on male and female faces posing happiness and an…
The influence of instructions on generalised valence – conditional stimulus instructions after evaluative conditioning update the explicit and implicit evaluations of generalisation stimuli
Generalisation in evaluative conditioning occurs when the valence acquired by a conditional stimulus (CS), after repeated pairing with an unconditional stimulus (US), spreads to stimuli that are similar to the CS (generalisation stimuli, GS). CS evaluations can be updated via CS instructions that conflict with prior conditioning (negative conditioning + positive instruction). We examined whether CS instructions can update GS evaluations after con…
Emotion malleability beliefs predict daily positive and negative affect in adolescents
The present study examined the relationship between emotion malleability beliefs and daily positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) in adolescents. 639 participants provided information about emotion malleability beliefs and emotion regulation strategies on the first day of the study and six daily measurements of PA and NA. Emotion malleability beliefs had a positive relationship with PA and a negative relationship with NA. Higher emotion ma…
Bodily cues of sex and emotion can interact symmetrically
Although much research has investigated how multiple sources of social information derived from faces are processed and integrated, few studies have extended this investigation to bodies. The current study addressed this gap by investigating the nature of the interaction between bodily cues of sex and emotion. Using the Garner paradigm, participants recruited from a university student participant pool categorized the sex or the emotional expressi…
Conceptual generalisation in fear conditioning using single and multiple category exemplars as conditional stimuli – electrodermal responses and valence evaluations generalise to the broader category
Conceptual generalisation occurs when conditional responses generalise to novel stimuli from the same category. Past research demonstrates that physiological fear responses generalise across categories, however, conceptual generalisation of stimulus valence evaluations during fear conditioning has not been examined. We investigated whether conceptual generalisation, as indexed by electrodermal responses and stimulus evaluations, would occur, and …
Featural vs. Holistic processing and visual sampling in the influence of social category cues on emotion recognition
Past research demonstrates that emotion recognition is influenced by social category cues present on faces. However, little research has investigated whether holistic processing is required to observe these influences of social category information on emotion perception, and no studies have investigated whether different visual sampling strategies (i.e. differences in the allocation of attention to different regions of the face) contribute to the…
Be careful what you say! – Evaluative change based on instructional learning generalizes to other similar stimuli and to the wider category
In evaluative conditioning, a conditional stimulus (CS; e.g. a neutral picture) acquires positive/negative valence if it is paired with a pleasant/unpleasant unconditional stimulus (US; e.g. a positive/negative picture). This valence generalises to other stimuli similar to the CS and to the wider CS category. Being informed that the CS will be paired with the US induces a similar change in valence (instructional learning), but it is not clear whe…
Stable middle‐aged face recognition
The own‐age bias (OAB) has been proposed to be caused by perceptual expertise and/or social‐cognitive mechanisms. Investigations into the role of social cognition have, however, yielded mixed results. One reason for this might be the tendency for research to focus on the OAB in young adults, between young and older adult faces where other‐age individuation experience is low. To explore whether social‐cognitive manipulations may be successful when…
Measuring unconditional stimulus expectancy during evaluative conditioning strengthens explicit conditional stimulus valence
During evaluative conditioning, a neutral conditional stimulus (CS) becomes pleasant or unpleasant after pairings with a positive/negative unconditional stimulus (US). Measures of US expectancy are commonly assessed during conditioning but it is unclear whether this affects evaluative learning. In Experiment 1, we examined whether the concurrent assessment of US expectancy alongside measures of CS valence would influence the acquisition, extincti…
Searching for emotion
The effect of social anxiety on top-down attentional orienting to emotional faces
One of the fundamental factors maintaining social anxiety is biased attention toward threatening facial expressions. Typically, this bias has been conceptualized as driven by an overactive bottom-up attentional system; however, this potentially overlooks the role of top-down attention in being able to modulate this bottom-up bias. Here, the role of top-down mechanisms in directing attention toward emotional faces was assessed with a modified dot-…
An own‐age bias in mixed‐ and pure‐list presentations
The own‐age bias (OAB) is suggested to be caused by perceptual‐expertise and/or social‐cognitive mechanisms. Bryce and Dodson (2013, Psychology and Aging , 28, 87, Exp 2) provided support for the social‐cognitive account, demonstrating an OAB for participants who encountered a mixed‐list of own‐ and other‐age faces, but not for participants who encountered a pure‐list of only own‐ or other‐age faces. They proposed that own‐age/other‐age categoriz…
Individual differences in higher-level cognitive abilities do not predict overconfidence in complex task performance
Contrast effects in backward evaluative conditioning
Past studies of backward evaluative conditioning (EC) have found an assimilation effect, in that neutral conditional stimuli (conditional stimulus [CS]) were found to acquire the valence of co-occurring unconditional stimuli (US). Recent studies employing a concurrent forward and backward conditioning paradigm with instructions suggesting a contrastive relation between the US and the backward CS have resulted in contrast effects, in that backward…
Food healthiness versus tastiness
For the Good Guys
Previous research has demonstrated that facial social category cues influence emotion perception such that happy expressions are categorized faster than negative expressions on faces belonging to positively evaluated social groups. We examined whether character information that is experimentally manipulated can also influence emotion perception. Across two experiments, participants learned to associate individuals posing neutral expressions with …
Emotional expressions reduce the own-age bias
We are better at recognizing faces of our own age group compared to faces of other age groups. It has been suggested that this own-age bias (OAB) might occur because of perceptual-expertise and/or social-cognitive mechanisms. Although there is evidence to suggest effects of perceptual-expertise, little research has explored the role of social-cognitive factors. To do so, we looked at how the presence of an emotional expression on the face changes…
You look pretty happy
A happy face advantage has consistently been shown in emotion categorization tasks; happy faces are categorized as happy faster than angry faces as angry. Furthermore, social category cues, such as facial sex and race, moderate the happy face advantage in evaluatively congruent ways with a larger happy face advantage for more positively evaluated faces. We investigated whether attractiveness, a facial attribute unrelated to more defined social ca…
Food healthiness versus tastiness
The influence of multiple social categories on emotion perception
The relationship between visual search and categorization of own- and other-age faces
Young adult participants are faster to detect young adult faces in crowds of infant and child faces than vice versa. These findings have been interpreted as evidence for more efficient attentional capture by own-age than other-age faces, but could alternatively reflect faster rejection of other-age than own-age distractors, consistent with the previously reported other-age categorization advantage: faster categorization of other-age than own-age …
Where should the balance be between “scientist” and “practitioner” in Australian undergraduate psychology
The scientist–practitioner model of training in psychology has been widely influential in the development of undergraduate curricula in Australia. The model had its origins in post-war America and has formed the basis for accreditation of psychology courses in Australia since the late 1970s. Recently a reconsideration of the model in Australian undergraduate psychology was argued for, suggesting that the absence of significant practical skills de…
Snakes and Cats in the Flower Bed
The observation that snakes and spiders are found faster among flowers and mushrooms than vice versa and that this search advantage is independent of set size supports the notion that fear-relevant stimuli are processed preferentially in a dedicated fear module. Experiment 1 replicated the faster identification of snakes and spiders but also found a set size effect in a blocked, but not in a mixed-trial, sequence. Experiment 2 failed to find fast…
Attentional bias to pictures of fear-relevant animals in a dot probe task
Attentional bias to fear-relevant animals was assessed in 69 participants not preselected on self-reported anxiety with the use of a dot probe task showing pictures of snakes, spiders, mushrooms, and flowers. Probes that replaced the fear-relevant stimuli (snakes and spiders) were found faster than probes that replaced the non-fear-relevant stimuli, indicating an attentional bias in the entire sample. The bias was not correlated with self-reporte…
Of snakes and flowers
Previous research in visual search indicates that animal fear-relevant deviants, snakes/spiders, are found faster among non fear-relevant backgrounds, flowers/mushrooms, than vice versa. Moreover, deviant absence was indicated faster among snakes/spiders and detection time for flower/mushroom deviants, but not for snake/spider deviants, increased in larger arrays. The current research indicates that the latter 2 results do not reflect on fear-rel…
When danger lurks in the background
Across 2 experiments, a new experimental procedure was used to investigate attentional capture by animal fear-relevant stimuli. In Experiment 1 (N=34), unselected participants were slower to detect a neutral target animal in the presence of a spider than a cockroach distractor and in the presence of a snake than a large lizard distractor. This result confirms that phylogenetically fear-relevant animals capture attention specifically and to a larg…
Automatic attention does not equal automatic fear
Theories of nonassociative fear acquisition hold that humans have an innate predisposition for some fears, such as fear of snakes and spiders. This predisposition may be mediated by an evolved fear module (Ohman & Mineka, 2001) that responds to basic perceptual features of threat stimuli by directing attention preferentially and generating an automatic fear response. Visual search and affective priming tasks were used to examine attentional proce…
No effect of inversion on attentional and affective processing of facial expressions
The decrease in recognition performance after face inversion has been taken to suggest that faces are processed holistically. Three experiments, 1 with schematic and 2 with photographic faces, were conducted to assess whether face inversion also affected visual search for and implicit evaluation of facial expressions of emotion. The 3 visual search experiments yielded the same differences in detection speed between different facial expressions of…
Searching for differences in race
Previous research has suggested that like animal and social fear-relevant stimuli, other-race faces (African American) are detected preferentially in visual search. Three experiments using Chinese or Indonesian faces as other-race faces yielded the opposite pattern of results: faster detection of same-race faces among other-race faces. This apparently inconsistent pattern of results was resolved by showing that Asian and African American faces ar…
Verbal instruction abolishes fear conditioned to racial out-group faces
Where should the balance be between “scientist” and “practitioner” in Australian undergraduate psychology
The scientist–practitioner model of training in psychology has been widely influential in the development of undergraduate curricula in Australia. The model had its origins in post-war America and has formed the basis for accreditation of psychology courses in Australia since the late 1970s. Recently a reconsideration of the model in Australian undergraduate psychology was argued for, suggesting that the absence of significant practical skills de…
Selective attention for masked and unmasked emotionally toned stimuli
We investigated selective attention for masked and unmasked, threat, and positively valenced words, in high trait anxious (HTA) and low trait anxious (LTA) individuals using the emotional Stroop colour‐naming task. State anxiety was varied within participants through the threat of electric shock. To investigate whether the sequencing of the state anxiety manipulation affected colour‐naming latencies, the ordering of the shock threat and shock saf…
The processing of invariant and variant face cues in the Garner Paradigm
Faces provide a complex source of information via invariant (e.g., race, sex and age) and variant (e.g., emotional expressions) cues. At present, it is not clear whether these different cues are processed separately or whether they interact. Using the Garner Paradigm, Experiment 1 confirmed that race, sex, and age cues affected the categorization of faces according to emotional expression whereas emotional expression had no effect on the categori…
The effect of poser race on the happy categorization advantage depends on stimulus type, set size, and presentation duration
The question as to whether poser race affects the happy categorization advantage, the faster categorization of happy than of negative emotional expressions, has been answered inconsistently. Hugenberg (2005) found the happy categorization advantage only for own race faces whereas faster categorization of angry expressions was evident for other race faces. Kubota and Ito (2007) found a happy categorization advantage for both own race and other rac…
In search of the emotional face
Previous research has provided inconsistent results regarding visual search for emotional faces, yielding evidence for either anger superiority (i.e., more efficient search for angry faces) or happiness superiority effects (i.e., more efficient search for happy faces), suggesting that these results do not reflect on emotional expression, but on emotion (un-)related low-level perceptual features. The present study investigated possible factors med…
Fear of Wolves and Bears
Human fear is important in wildlife management, but self-reported fear provides only partial information about fear reactions. Thus, eye movements, skin conductance, and changes in heart rate were assessed during picture viewing, visual search, and implicit evaluation tasks. Pictures of bears, wolves, moose, and hares were presented to participants who self-reported as fearful of bears (n = 8), fearful of bears and wolves (n = 15), or not fearful…
Different faces in the crowd
Recently, D.V. Becker, Anderson, Mortensen, Neufeld, and Neel (2011) proposed recommendations to avoid methodological confounds in visual search studies using emotional photographic faces. These confounds were argued to cause the frequently observed Anger Superiority Effect (ASE), the faster detection of angry than happy expressions, and conceal a true Happiness Superiority Effect (HSE). In Experiment 1, we applied these recommendations (for the …
Emotional expressions preferentially elicit implicit evaluations of faces also varying in race or age
Both facial cues of group membership (race, age, and sex) and emotional expressions can elicit implicit evaluations to guide subsequent social behavior. There is, however, little research addressing whether group membership cues or emotional expressions are more influential in the formation of implicit evaluations of faces when both cues are simultaneously present. The current study aimed to determine this. Emotional expressions but not race or a…
A Happy Face Advantage With Male Caucasian Faces
Happy faces are categorized faster as “happy” than angry faces as “angry,” the happy face advantage. Here, we show across three experiments that the size of the happy face advantage for male Caucasian faces varies as a function of the other faces they are presented with. A happy face advantage was present if the male Caucasian faces were presented among male African American faces, but absent if the same faces were presented among female faces, C…
The influence of facial sex cues on emotional expression categorization is not fixed
The speed of recognizing facial expressions of emotion is influenced by a range of factors including other concurrently present facial attributes, like a person's sex. Typically, when participants categorize happy and angry expressions on male and female faces, they are faster to categorize happy than angry expressions displayed by females, but not displayed by males. Using the same emotional faces across tasks, we demonstrate that this influence…
The influence of multiple social categories on emotion perception
For the Good Guys
Previous research has demonstrated that facial social category cues influence emotion perception such that happy expressions are categorized faster than negative expressions on faces belonging to positively evaluated social groups. We examined whether character information that is experimentally manipulated can also influence emotion perception. Across two experiments, participants learned to associate individuals posing neutral expressions with …
Emotional expressions reduce the own-age bias
We are better at recognizing faces of our own age group compared to faces of other age groups. It has been suggested that this own-age bias (OAB) might occur because of perceptual-expertise and/or social-cognitive mechanisms. Although there is evidence to suggest effects of perceptual-expertise, little research has explored the role of social-cognitive factors. To do so, we looked at how the presence of an emotional expression on the face changes…
You look pretty happy
A happy face advantage has consistently been shown in emotion categorization tasks; happy faces are categorized as happy faster than angry faces as angry. Furthermore, social category cues, such as facial sex and race, moderate the happy face advantage in evaluatively congruent ways with a larger happy face advantage for more positively evaluated faces. We investigated whether attractiveness, a facial attribute unrelated to more defined social ca…
The relationship between visual search and categorization of own- and other-age faces
Young adult participants are faster to detect young adult faces in crowds of infant and child faces than vice versa. These findings have been interpreted as evidence for more efficient attentional capture by own-age than other-age faces, but could alternatively reflect faster rejection of other-age than own-age distractors, consistent with the previously reported other-age categorization advantage: faster categorization of other-age than own-age …
Individual differences in higher-level cognitive abilities do not predict overconfidence in complex task performance
Contrast effects in backward evaluative conditioning
Past studies of backward evaluative conditioning (EC) have found an assimilation effect, in that neutral conditional stimuli (conditional stimulus [CS]) were found to acquire the valence of co-occurring unconditional stimuli (US). Recent studies employing a concurrent forward and backward conditioning paradigm with instructions suggesting a contrastive relation between the US and the backward CS have resulted in contrast effects, in that backward…
Psychology (42 works) · Cognitive psychology (36 works) · Social Psychology (28 works) · Face Recognition and Perception (23 works) · Developmental psychology (22 works) · Communication (17 works) · Facial expression (17 works) · Perception (17 works) · Social Psychology (17 works) · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior (15 works)