Angry Faces Elicit Freeze Response In People, Research
Christopher Philip
The results showed that when subjects were presented with angry faces their body sway was reduced much more significantly than when they were presented neutral or happy faces.
The freeze, flight or fight response, usually in that order, is well understood in animals. It’s been previously described as the flight or fight response, but this is not as accurate as I wrote initially. Freezing is characterized by bradycardia (decreased heart rate), and reduced body motion. This is the first reaction an animal makes to threat and likely serve the purpose of assessing the situation. Panicking comes later, once the threat is known and in which direction escape is best, then flight takes place. If escape is not possible, then an animal will fight for its life. This presents the greatest risk of death or severe injury so it’s a last resort.
Up until now, no studies have never tested whether threat stimuli have elicited a freeze-like response in people. Karin Roelofs, Leiden University Institute for Psychological Research, Department of Clinical, Health and Neuropsychology and her colleagues wished to assess if angry faces where enough to get people to freeze in their tracks.
“Social threats are a less direct danger to a person’s physical integrity than physical threats are, but social threats may prime defensive body reactions, such as freezing, in humans, as they do in animals,” say the authors. “After encountering a dangerous situation (e.g., an approaching predator), animals freeze when the threat is distant and
fear is relatively low.”
Previous research using various psychophysiological measures, including facial electromyography, skin conductance, and heart activity show that the same processes happening in animals also happens in people. The visual cues from negative stimuli put people into the post-encounter stage of threat response. The amydala in the brain send commands to the periaqueductal gray, there, the dorsal region mediates action. It sounds technical, but suffice it to say that the process is more or less automatic and the brain is linked directly to the muscles mediating movement.
“In that stage, escape is blocked, and the participant is immobile and vigilant, like a freezing animal.”
The Experiment
To study the effects of facial expressions, and whether they where enough to produce immobility or a freeze responses, subjects where presented with either neutral, happy, or angry faces. As the participants viewed the images, they were analyzed for their body motion using “posturography.” This is as simple as measuring the body as it moves left and right as well as forward and backwards using various sensors. Data was also collected on their heart rate as well as their self rated anxiety.
The Results
The results showed that when subjects were presented with angry faces their body sway was reduced much more significantly than when they were presented neutral or happy faces. Second, heart rate also decreased markedly when shown angry faces but not happy or neutral faces. Lastly, body sway and reduced heart rate correlated with subjective anxiety scores.
“This is the first study showing that purely social threat cues without direct reference to physical threat and injury can induce body-freeze-like reactions in humans.”
Highly anxious people also showed greater reduction in sway than did those who scored lower.
“Our findings of spontaneous freeze-like reactions to angry faces extend previous results showing greater tendencies to avoid angry faces, compared with happy faces and neutral faces, in forced-choice reaction time paradigms. Apparently, when angry faces are presented to anxious individuals who are forced to choose between approach and avoidance responses, these faces facilitate avoidance.”
Freeze response is an early orienting response. The body stops, looks toward the threat, calms itself and decides on the more appropriate action.
Take Away Message
In nonverbal communication, a simple way to verify anxiety is to watch for this salient cue. First a baseline is created to measure a person’s overall sway or “affect” and when a threat is present, the reaction or lack of reaction determines how potent it is to the person you are reading.
Hand and leg movements have also been suggested as possible ways in which people freeze when under pressure. Watching for freeze behaviour can provide clues to what makes people tick.
Resources
Karin Roelofs; Muriel A. Hagenaars; and John Stins. Facing Freeze: Social Threat Induces Bodily Freeze in Humans. Psychological Science. 2019 21(11): 1575-1581.
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