The effects of spatial frequency on the decoding of emotional facial expressions

The accurate detection of emotion is critical to effectively navigating our social lives. However, it is not clear how distinct types of visual information afford the accurate perception of others’ emotion states. Here, we sought to examine the influence of different spatial frequency visual information on emotion categorization, and whether distinctive emotional dimensions (valence and arousal) are differentially influenced by specific spatial frequency content. Across one pilot and two experiments (N = 603), we tested whether emotional facial expressions that vary in valence, arousal, and motivational direction differ in accuracy of categorization as a function of low, intact, and high spatial frequency band information. Overall, we found a general decrease in the breadth of emotional expressions for filtered images but did not see a decrease in accuracy of categorization for the positive emotion, joy. Together, these results suggest that spatial frequency information influences perception of emotional expressions that differ in valence, arousal, and motivational direction.