Figure 2.

Positive ratings are characterised by an early attraction to negativity particularly in response to HSF faces. (a) There was a partial attraction to the competing (unselected) response option which was more evident on trials rated as positive (attraction to negative) than on trials rated as negative (attraction to positive). This pattern of results was exaggerated for the HSF images, which emphasise a slower, more elaborate processing than the LSF images. (b) We averaged the x-coordinates within the sequence of the trajectory showing a significantinteraction (time steps 48–57) and submitted these to GEE multi-level regression. We found that LSF trajectories demonstrated the negativity bias, with significantly more attraction (i.e. lower x-coordinates) toward the opposite response for “positive” rather than “negative” categorizations(B = −0.08; SE = 0.03; Z = −2.52; p = .01), but this effect was exacerbated in the HSF condition (B = −0.14, SE = 0.03, Z = −4.57, p < .001). Error bars denote standard error of the mean.