{"id":2136,"date":"2015-11-24T01:38:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T06:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=2136"},"modified":"2017-06-27T14:24:48","modified_gmt":"2017-06-27T18:24:48","slug":"is-it-just-me-or-is-that-athlete-really-aggressive-looking-the-importance-of-context-in-the-memory-of-faces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2015\/11\/24\/is-it-just-me-or-is-that-athlete-really-aggressive-looking-the-importance-of-context-in-the-memory-of-faces\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it just me or is that athlete really aggressive looking?: The importance of context in the memory of faces"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Remember back in high school, the last basketball game of the season against your biggest rival? You were guarding the best player on the other team, let’s call her Chelsey. The teams were going back and forth in points. As the seconds ticked off the clock the game picked up in intensity. There was a lot of pushing and shoving that was going unnoticed by the refs. You personally were being elbowed and pushed out of the box by Chelsey. The look on her face was pure determination and aggression; a desire to win the competition. Unfortunately, your team lost, and it was a long bus ride home. During it, all you and your teammates could talk about were the other players and how aggressive they looked.<\/p>\n

Later, you see Chelsey again at the All-star game. This time, the two of you are on the same team. You play alongside Chelsey for the entire game, feeding her passes and rebounding her misses, working as a real team. After the game, you hear someone from the other team talking about how aggressive looking Chelsey was. This makes you think back to how you remembered Chelsey\u2019s face as aggressive as well. But thinking back to the playing in the All-star game you don’t remember Chelsey as having an aggressive face.<\/p>\n

Why did the way you remember Chelsey\u2019s face change? The answer is context. This is a perfect example of how important context is for memory. When interpreting a stimulus in the world, say a face, you use both top-down and bottom-up processing. Top-down processing is when you use your prior knowledge and expectations to interpret the stimulus. Bottom-up processing is when you use the basic features of the stimulus to interpret it. So to interpret a face you look at the features themselves (bottom-up processing) and use the context or situation you are in and your expectations for that scenario (top-down processing) to understand and make sense of the face. An example of how this relates to memory is the butcher on the bus scenario (Mandler, 1980). In this example, a man gets on a bus and sees a man he recognizes. But no matter how much he tries, he can\u2019t remember how he knows this man or where they met. Later, when he goes to the butcher shop, he sees the man from the bus, but this time behind the counter. That is when he makes the connection that the man is his local butcher. This shows that context helps us make connections in the world using our top-down processing.<\/p>\n

So how does this relate to Chelsey\u2019s face? Research shows that the context in which you observed a person will determine how you remember his or her face. Balas and Thomas (2015<\/a>)\u00a0found that people in a competitive setting remembered faces as being more aggressive than people who were in a cooperative setting. An aggressive or angry face is characterized by eyebrow lowering and lip raising which creates a face with a higher width-to-height ratio (WHR). The higher the WHR value, the more aggressive a face is perceived. \u00a0For example, in the photo below, the face on the left has a lower WHR and would be perceived as less aggressive than the face on the right:<\/p>\n

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In their study, the researchers had participants play a game either in a competitive condition (against a confederate) or in a cooperative condition (playing with the confederate) in the presence of a referee confederate. The game consisted of throwing a ball at a target with different point values on it. In the competitive condition, the participant and player confederate took turns throwing balls at the target with the winner being the first person to reach 1,000 points. In the cooperative condition, the participant and player confederate took turns throwing balls until together they reached 2,000 points. After the game, the participants were asked to recreate the faces of both confederates using pictures of their individual features. The participants in the cooperative condition recreated faces with lower WHRs than the participants in the competitive condition for both confederates.<\/p>\n

When you played against Chelsey, you were in a competitive situation. The context was competitive, and your prior knowledge told you that aggression and competition are related. This caused you to remember her face as being more aggressive than when you were her teammate. In that situation you worked cooperatively and your prior knowledge told you that friendly and helpful are associated with cooperative to guide your memory of her face as unaggressive.<\/p>\n

So what does this all mean? It means that the context in which you see someone is crucial for how you will later remember them. So, if you happen to play against any of these athletes you may remember them like this:<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>\u00a0\"\"<\/a>\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

But if you see them in a context that is not competitive, you may remember them like this:<\/p>\n

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\"hope-solo-at-2015-espys-awards-in-los-angeles_6\"<\/a>\u00a0\"\"<\/a>\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

Not only that, but it shows\u00a0how important top-down processing is for our memory. It is not just important for how we remember faces, but everything in our world. Prior knowledge really impacts how we interpret and then remember a situation. It also shows us that memory is context dependent, that is, the correct context helps us remember things. When placed in the right context, it is much easier to remember something that when in the wrong context (remember the butcher on the bus). So the next time you are trying to recall something, the closer to the appropriate context you get, the easier it will be to remember it.<\/p>\n

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To read more about\u00a0face recognition in emotional situations, check out this<\/a> blog post<\/p>\n

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References:<\/p>\n

Balas, B., & Thomas, L.E. (2015). Competition makes observers remember faces as more aggressive. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General<\/em>, 144<\/em>, 711-716.<\/p>\n

Mandler, G. (1980). Recognizing: The judgment of previous occurrence.\u00a0Psychological Review, 87,<\/i>\u00a0252\u2013271.<\/p>\n

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Images (in the order they appear)<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.sunjournal.com\/files\/imagecache\/story_large\/2011\/01\/25\/SPTohhsmtbhoops1p012611.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.viewzone.com\/whatisbeauty.html<\/p>\n

http:\/\/idgafffffffff.tumblr.com\/post\/29227970933\/this-is-a-hope-solo-bitchface-appreciation-post<\/p>\n

http:\/\/sportsheaven.sportsblog.com\/posts\/1815727\/why_is_kevin_durant_angry_.html<\/p>\n

http:\/\/sportige.com\/pujols-cardinals-contract\/<\/p>\n

HOPE SOLO at 2015 Espys Awards in Los Angeles<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n