Behind every strong man there is a strong background: The effect of dynamic background textures on facial evaluation

Human evaluation of facial expressions is significantly affected by the emotional context of the visual background [Koji and Fernandes, Can.  J. Exp. Psychol., 2010, 64(2), 107-116]. We recently found that dynamic visual textures elicit a wide range of emotional responses, with dominance (strength or conspicuity) being one of the principal affective dimensions [Toet et al., i-Perception, 2012, 2(9), 969-991]. In the current study we investigate whether dynamic textured backgrounds also affect the judgement of human facial expressions. Participants rated the dominance of 12 (neutral ) male faces. In the first experiment  we validated  the neutrality of these faces by placing them on a neutral (black) background. Results show that none of the faces resulted in a non-zero dominance score. In the second experiment the faces were overlaid (opacity 80%) on 12 different natural dynamic background textures, six of which were very strong/conspicuous and six which were very weak/inconspicuous. The results show that the (neutral) faces were rated significantly more dominant on strong/conspicuous backgrounds than on neutral backgrounds. There is no significant difference between ratings obtained with weak/inconspicuous backgrounds and with neutral backgrounds. We conclude that natural dynamic backgrounds (typically not perceived as emotional) can significantly affect the evaluation of facial expressions.