Maital Neta
Biographic Data
| ID | 770701 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Maital Neta |
| GIVEN NAMES | Maital |
| FAMILY NAME | Neta |
| SIGNATURE | MAITAL |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Nebraska–Lincoln |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8586-0963 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 19 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Intersection of biases
Emotional expressions offer important social cues about the expresser’s intentions and risks or rewards in the environment. The current study investigated how individual differences in interpretation of ambiguous facial expressions (valence bias) are impacted by intergroup racial biases. In an online study of 409 racially diverse US participants, we found that across racial groups, participants judged in-group faces more positively than out-group…
Measuring the semantic priming effect across many languages
Greater social network complexity mitigates pandemic-related negativity
Having strong, diverse social relationships is tightly linked to myriad physical and mental health benefits by mitigating the negative impacts of adverse events. The COVID-19 pandemic brought increased uncertainty and changes to our social lives that reduced the spread of COVID-19 (e.g., social distancing), but also likely impacted emotional well-being. We investigated how one of these changes - changing social networks - relates to emotional bia…
Proposing a model whereby negative valence bias increases the risk for more severe dysphoric posttraumatic stress disorder and depression symptomology
Experiencing trauma increases risk for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, and individuals who experience psychopathology after a traumatic event often experience symptoms from both disorders. Because a tendency to view events in a more negative light and a propensity toward threat appraisals are risk factors for both PTSD and depression, negative valence bias-a tendency to appraise emotional ambiguity as having a more negative (…
Surprise as an Emotion
We write in response to an article published in this journal by Andrew Ortony titled “Are All ‘Basic Emotions’ Emotions? A Problem for the (Basic) Emotions Construct.” The author claimed that “for all its elevated status as a basic emotion, surprise fails to satisfy the minimal requirements that [he] proposed for something to be an emotion, and if it is not an emotion, it cannot possibly be a basic emotion.” Although we acknowledge the concerns b…
Think again
Stimuli such as surprised faces are ambiguous in that they are associated with both positive and negative outcomes. Interestingly, people differ reliably in whether they evaluate these and other ambiguous stimuli as positive or negative, and we have argued that a positive evaluation relies in part on a biasing of the appraisal processes via reappraisal. To further test this idea, we conducted two studies to evaluate whether increasing the cogniti…
Face Coverings Differentially Alter Valence Judgments of Emotional Expressions
Face masks that prevent disease transmission obscure facial expressions, impairing nonverbal communication. We assessed the impact of lower (masks) and upper (sunglasses) face coverings on emotional valence judgments of clearly valenced (fearful, happy) and ambiguously valenced (surprised) expressions, the latter of which have both positive and negative meaning. Masks, but not sunglasses, impaired judgments of clearly valenced expressions compare…
Tendency to share positive emotions buffers loneliness-related negativity in the context of shared adversity
Political identity biases Americans' judgments of outgroup emotion
The dynamic process of ambiguous emotion perception
Everyday social interactions hinge on our ability to resolve uncertainty in nonverbal cues. For example, although some facial expressions (e.g. happy, angry) convey a clear affective meaning, others (e.g. surprise) are ambiguous, in that their meaning is determined by the context. Here, we used mouse-tracking to examine the underlying process of resolving uncertainty. Previous work has suggested an initial negativity, in part via faster response …
Spring Break or Heart Break? Extending Valence Bias to Emotional Words
Ambiguous stimuli are useful for assessing emotional bias. For example, surprised faces could convey a positive or negative meaning, and the degree to which an individual interprets these expressions as positive or negative represents their “valence bias.” Currently, the most well-validated ambiguous stimuli for assessing valence bias include nonverbal signals (faces and scenes), overlooking an inherent ambiguity in verbal signals. This study ide…
Through the eyes of the beholder
Although some facial expressions provide clear information about people's emotions and intentions (happy, angry), others (surprise) are ambiguous because they can signal both positive (e.g., surprise party) and negative outcomes (e.g., witnessing an accident). Without a clarifying context, surprise is interpreted as positive by some and negative by others, and this valence bias is stable across time. When compared to fearful expressions, which ar…
The impact of uncertain threat on affective bias
Individuals who operate under highly stressful conditions (e.g., military personnel and first responders) are often faced with the challenge of quickly interpreting ambiguous information in uncertain and threatening environments. When faced with ambiguity, it is likely adaptive to view potentially dangerous stimuli as threatening until contextual information proves otherwise. One laboratory-based paradigm that can be used to simulate uncertain th…
Don’t like what you see? Give it time
Images with an ambiguous valence (e.g., surprised facial expressions) are interpreted by some people as having a negative valence, and by others, as having a more positive valence. Despite these individual differences in valence bias, the more automatic interpretation is negative, and positivity appears to require regulation. Interestingly, extant research has shown that there is an age-related positivity effect such that relative to young adults…
Emotion
We begin this review by being clear that we will cover a small subset of what we know about emotion. Specifically, we begin by discussing the role of the amygdala in emotional responses during biologically relevant learning. In doing so, we focus on the human amygdala. We then connect this information to more classic measurements of emotional responding, namely, electromyography (EMG) and electrodermal activity (EDA). Next, we discuss the role of…
Valence resolution of ambiguous facial expressions using an emotional oddball task
Previous research suggests that neural and behavioral responses to surprised faces are modulated by explicit contexts (e.g., "He just found $500"). Here, we examined the effect of implicit contexts (i.e., valence of other frequently presented faces) on both valence ratings and ability to detect surprised faces (i.e., the infrequent target). In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that participants interpret surprised faces more positively when they are p…
Corrugator muscle responses are associated with individual differences in positivity-negativity bias
Corrugator supercilii muscle activity is considered an objective measure of valence because it increases in response to negatively valenced facial expressions (angry) and decreases to positive expressions (happy). The authors sought to determine if corrugator activity could be used as an objective measure of positivity-negativity bias. The authors recorded corrugator responses as participants rated angry, happy, and surprised faces as "positive" …
Humans Prefer Curved Visual Objects
People constantly make snap judgments about objects encountered in the environment. Such rapid judgments must be based on the physical properties of the targets, but the nature of these properties is yet unknown. We hypothesized that sharp transitions in contour might convey a sense of threat, and therefore trigger a negative bias. Our results were consistent with this hypothesis. The type of contour a visual object possesses—whether the contour …
Very first impressions
First impressions of people's personalities are often formed by using the visual appearance of their faces. Defining how quickly these impressions can be formed has critical implications for understanding social interactions and for determining the visual properties used to shape them. To study impression formation independent of emotional cues, threat judgments were made on faces with a neutral expression. Consequently, participants' judgments p…
Greater social network complexity mitigates pandemic-related negativity
Having strong, diverse social relationships is tightly linked to myriad physical and mental health benefits by mitigating the negative impacts of adverse events. The COVID-19 pandemic brought increased uncertainty and changes to our social lives that reduced the spread of COVID-19 (e.g., social distancing), but also likely impacted emotional well-being. We investigated how one of these changes - changing social networks - relates to emotional bia…
Tendency to share positive emotions buffers loneliness-related negativity in the context of shared adversity
Political identity biases Americans' judgments of outgroup emotion
Humans Prefer Curved Visual Objects
People constantly make snap judgments about objects encountered in the environment. Such rapid judgments must be based on the physical properties of the targets, but the nature of these properties is yet unknown. We hypothesized that sharp transitions in contour might convey a sense of threat, and therefore trigger a negative bias. Our results were consistent with this hypothesis. The type of contour a visual object possesses—whether the contour …
Very first impressions
First impressions of people's personalities are often formed by using the visual appearance of their faces. Defining how quickly these impressions can be formed has critical implications for understanding social interactions and for determining the visual properties used to shape them. To study impression formation independent of emotional cues, threat judgments were made on faces with a neutral expression. Consequently, participants' judgments p…
Corrugator muscle responses are associated with individual differences in positivity-negativity bias
Corrugator supercilii muscle activity is considered an objective measure of valence because it increases in response to negatively valenced facial expressions (angry) and decreases to positive expressions (happy). The authors sought to determine if corrugator activity could be used as an objective measure of positivity-negativity bias. The authors recorded corrugator responses as participants rated angry, happy, and surprised faces as "positive" …
Valence resolution of ambiguous facial expressions using an emotional oddball task
Previous research suggests that neural and behavioral responses to surprised faces are modulated by explicit contexts (e.g., "He just found $500"). Here, we examined the effect of implicit contexts (i.e., valence of other frequently presented faces) on both valence ratings and ability to detect surprised faces (i.e., the infrequent target). In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that participants interpret surprised faces more positively when they are p…
Emotion
We begin this review by being clear that we will cover a small subset of what we know about emotion. Specifically, we begin by discussing the role of the amygdala in emotional responses during biologically relevant learning. In doing so, we focus on the human amygdala. We then connect this information to more classic measurements of emotional responding, namely, electromyography (EMG) and electrodermal activity (EDA). Next, we discuss the role of…
Don’t like what you see? Give it time
Images with an ambiguous valence (e.g., surprised facial expressions) are interpreted by some people as having a negative valence, and by others, as having a more positive valence. Despite these individual differences in valence bias, the more automatic interpretation is negative, and positivity appears to require regulation. Interestingly, extant research has shown that there is an age-related positivity effect such that relative to young adults…
The impact of uncertain threat on affective bias
Individuals who operate under highly stressful conditions (e.g., military personnel and first responders) are often faced with the challenge of quickly interpreting ambiguous information in uncertain and threatening environments. When faced with ambiguity, it is likely adaptive to view potentially dangerous stimuli as threatening until contextual information proves otherwise. One laboratory-based paradigm that can be used to simulate uncertain th…
Through the eyes of the beholder
Although some facial expressions provide clear information about people's emotions and intentions (happy, angry), others (surprise) are ambiguous because they can signal both positive (e.g., surprise party) and negative outcomes (e.g., witnessing an accident). Without a clarifying context, surprise is interpreted as positive by some and negative by others, and this valence bias is stable across time. When compared to fearful expressions, which ar…
The dynamic process of ambiguous emotion perception
Everyday social interactions hinge on our ability to resolve uncertainty in nonverbal cues. For example, although some facial expressions (e.g. happy, angry) convey a clear affective meaning, others (e.g. surprise) are ambiguous, in that their meaning is determined by the context. Here, we used mouse-tracking to examine the underlying process of resolving uncertainty. Previous work has suggested an initial negativity, in part via faster response …
Spring Break or Heart Break? Extending Valence Bias to Emotional Words
Ambiguous stimuli are useful for assessing emotional bias. For example, surprised faces could convey a positive or negative meaning, and the degree to which an individual interprets these expressions as positive or negative represents their “valence bias.” Currently, the most well-validated ambiguous stimuli for assessing valence bias include nonverbal signals (faces and scenes), overlooking an inherent ambiguity in verbal signals. This study ide…
Political identity biases Americans' judgments of outgroup emotion
Surprise as an Emotion
We write in response to an article published in this journal by Andrew Ortony titled “Are All ‘Basic Emotions’ Emotions? A Problem for the (Basic) Emotions Construct.” The author claimed that “for all its elevated status as a basic emotion, surprise fails to satisfy the minimal requirements that [he] proposed for something to be an emotion, and if it is not an emotion, it cannot possibly be a basic emotion.” Although we acknowledge the concerns b…
Think again
Stimuli such as surprised faces are ambiguous in that they are associated with both positive and negative outcomes. Interestingly, people differ reliably in whether they evaluate these and other ambiguous stimuli as positive or negative, and we have argued that a positive evaluation relies in part on a biasing of the appraisal processes via reappraisal. To further test this idea, we conducted two studies to evaluate whether increasing the cogniti…
Face Coverings Differentially Alter Valence Judgments of Emotional Expressions
Face masks that prevent disease transmission obscure facial expressions, impairing nonverbal communication. We assessed the impact of lower (masks) and upper (sunglasses) face coverings on emotional valence judgments of clearly valenced (fearful, happy) and ambiguously valenced (surprised) expressions, the latter of which have both positive and negative meaning. Masks, but not sunglasses, impaired judgments of clearly valenced expressions compare…
Tendency to share positive emotions buffers loneliness-related negativity in the context of shared adversity
Proposing a model whereby negative valence bias increases the risk for more severe dysphoric posttraumatic stress disorder and depression symptomology
Experiencing trauma increases risk for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, and individuals who experience psychopathology after a traumatic event often experience symptoms from both disorders. Because a tendency to view events in a more negative light and a propensity toward threat appraisals are risk factors for both PTSD and depression, negative valence bias-a tendency to appraise emotional ambiguity as having a more negative (…
Intersection of biases
Emotional expressions offer important social cues about the expresser’s intentions and risks or rewards in the environment. The current study investigated how individual differences in interpretation of ambiguous facial expressions (valence bias) are impacted by intergroup racial biases. In an online study of 409 racially diverse US participants, we found that across racial groups, participants judged in-group faces more positively than out-group…
Measuring the semantic priming effect across many languages
Greater social network complexity mitigates pandemic-related negativity
Having strong, diverse social relationships is tightly linked to myriad physical and mental health benefits by mitigating the negative impacts of adverse events. The COVID-19 pandemic brought increased uncertainty and changes to our social lives that reduced the spread of COVID-19 (e.g., social distancing), but also likely impacted emotional well-being. We investigated how one of these changes - changing social networks - relates to emotional bia…
Psychology (18 works) · Social Psychology (14 works) · Cognitive psychology (13 works) · Cognition (9 works) · Face Recognition and Perception (8 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (7 works) · Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies (6 works) · Valence (chemistry (6 works) · Ambiguity (5 works)