Spatial frequency and valence interact in complex emotion perception

Research on spatial frequency contributions to facial emotion identification has largely focused on basic emotions. The present experiment characterised spatial frequency contributions to decoding complex emotions, which can be less visible and intense than basic emotions. We investigated the effects of spatial frequency, expression valence and perceptually available features (full face or eyes only) on decoding accuracy. We observed main effects of all factors, with better performance for high (relative to low) spatial frequency, for positive (relative to negative) emotions and for full face (relative to eyes only) conditions. We also observed an interaction of all factors. The high spatial frequency advantage in decoding accuracy was eliminated only for full faces expressing more positive complex emotions. These findings suggest advantages from high spatial frequency content in accurately decoding complex emotions may attenuate when positive complex emotions are decoded from the spatial frequency content of a broader constellation of features.