When Angry Faces Seem More Frequent: The Role of Encoding Focus and Anxiety

In everyday social contexts, people frequently make summary judgments about how often particular emotional expressions occur. These judgments shape impressions of social environments, yet they are not always accurate. According to the availability heuristic, frequency estimates are influenced not only by objective base rates but also by the ease with which examples come to mind. Because emotionally salient stimuli are prioritized in attention and memory, they may feel more prevalent than they are. Angry facial expressions, which signal potential social and/or physical threat, are especially likely to capture and hold attention. The present thesis examined whether individuals overestimate the frequency of angry faces, whether this bias depends on attentional focus during encoding, and whether individual differences in trait and social anxiety are associated with this effect. In Study 1a, participants viewed a series of angry, happy, and neutral faces presented equally often, each paired with a gender word displayed beneath the chin. Task instructions required attention to the face only, the word only, both the face and the word, or allowed participants to freely view the displays. After encoding, participants estimated the percentage of faces displaying each emotion and completed a surprise recognition memory task. Participants consistently overestimated the frequency of angry faces relative to happy and neutral faces, and this bias was not modulated by task instructions at encoding. Recognition memory for individual faces did not differ across emotions, and individual differences in memory did not predict frequency estimates, suggesting that the angry-face frequency bias does not reflect enhanced memory for individual angry faces. Study 1b extended this design by making emotional expression explicitly task-relevant during encoding. Participants were asked to classify each face as angry, happy, or neutral before completing the same frequency estimation and recognition tasks. Although participants continued to overestimate angry faces relative to their true proportion, the magnitude of the bias was significantly reduced compared to Study 1a. Classification tendencies during encoding were unrelated to later frequency judgments, and recognition memory again did not modulate the bias. These findings suggest that explicitly attending to emotional expressions can weaken, but not eliminate, the angry-face frequency bias. The thesis also examined whether individual differences in anxiety were associated with frequency judgments. Trait anxiety was unrelated to estimates for any emotional expression. Social anxiety showed a modest association with frequency estimates in Study 1a, predicting higher estimates of happy faces after controlling for trait anxiety; however, this relationship could not be examined in Study 1b, as trait anxiety was not included. Overall, anxiety accounted for only a small proportion of variance in frequency judgments and did not reliably predict the angry-face frequency bias. Across studies, participants consistently overestimated the frequency of angry faces despite equal base rates and similar recognition memory across emotions. These findings support an availability-based account in which angry faces feel more prevalent because they are cognitively salient and accessible, rather than because individual angry faces are remembered better. The results highlight a dissociation between memory for individual items and summary frequency judgments and suggest that threat-related expressions may disproportionately shape perceptions of social environments.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A. Psychology

Level thesis:degree_level

Master

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Faculty of Social Sciences

Department dc:contributor.department

Department of Psychology

Grantor dc:publisher

Brock University

Year dc:date.issued

2026

Author dc:creator

• Tardif, Makenna

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Arnell, Karen

• Emotion
• Availability bias
• Frequency judgements
• Angry faces
• Encoding focus
• Recognition memory
• Anxiety

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10464/20425

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:brocku.scholaris.ca:10464/20425