| 其他摘要 | Affective learning is the process by which a neutral object in the environment acquires value or valenced meaning via its ability to predict a rewarding or threatening outcome. Previous research suggested that people are likely to judge a neutral face as more positive or negative, more trustworthy or less trustworthy, more likeable or dislikeable, after the face is paired with positive or negative information. The past studies were all based on Western participants and the stimuli were all Caucasian faces. However, it is unclear whether there is other-race effect in affective learning, furthermore, whether affective learning depends on awareness. In the present research, we investigated the mechanism of affective learning effects on own-race and other-race faces, via three studies. In Study 1, we explored affective learning effects on own-race and other-race faces occurred consciously. First, we adopted the minimal affective learning paradigm and the stimuli were only Asian faces. The results of Chinese people confirmed the classical affective learning effect. Afterwards, we investigated affective learning effects on own-race and other-race faces between Chinese and European Americans. The findings are as follows: (1) the patterns of learning effects were similar between Chinese and American participants; (2) both Chinese and Americans learned positive and negative social information paired with own-race faces; (3) both Chinese and Americans tended to associate other-race faces with negative social information. In Study 2, we tested whether affective learning can occur without awareness. We adopted Continuous Flash Suppression paradigm to render emotional faces invisible. We measured affective learning effects on three dimensions: warmth, trustworthiness, and competence. First, we used Asian face stimuli. For Chinese participants, judgments of warmth were influenced by invisible positive faces. Next, we used Asian and Caucasian face stimuli and tested unconscious affective learning effects for Chinese and European Americans. We found that: (1) for Chinese people, judgments of warmth about other-race faces were influence by invisible positive faces; (2) Chinese participants showed significant in-group derogation when making judgments of trustworthiness and competence. (3) for American participants, judgments of warmth, trustworthiness and competence were all influenced by invisible facial expressions. Warmth was the most sensitive to invisible affective information. In study 3, we investigated how people divide attention toward own-race and other-race faces, during minimal affective learning. We used eye-tracking to measure eye fixation patterns in Chinese participants during learning and test phase. First, only Asian face stimuli were used. We found that: (1) during learning phase, people looked more at faces paired with negative and neutral sentences, comparing with faces paired with positive sentences; (2) during learning phase and test phase, people look at the eyes most of the time, following by the nose, and the mouth. Thereafter, we used Asian and Caucasian face stimuli, and measured eye movements and pupillary responses to Asian and Caucasian faces. We found that: (1) during learning phase, people make more fixations on own-race faces than other-race faces, and pupil dilations were larger when viewing other-race than own-race faces. This suggests a more automatic, deeper processing of own-race faces, and people spent a greater cognitive effort when learning other-race faces; (2) during learning phase, people looked more at other-race faces paired with negative and neutral sentences than their positive counterparts. However, they look more at own-race faces paired with negative sentences than their neutral or positive counterparts. To sum up, comparing with previous studies, the present research goes further in three aspects: types of stimuli, technology, and culture of participants. The results comfirmed that affective learning effects of own-race faces were different with that of other-race faces, no matter whether learning was conscious or not. In addition, both race and unconditional stimuli (US) can influence how people divide attention toward faces, to different extent. This paper makes important contributions to the theories of affective learning and other-race effect. |
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