Fig 1.
Time course of a trial where participants were asked to indicate where they would like to sit. The faces were masked due to copyright issues. Stimuli depicted in the experiment included faces from the Radboud Faces Database. For a figure without masks, see Fig 1 in [41] or in Chapter 7 in [64].
Fig 2.
Poses adopted by each of the experimental groups.
Participants adopted no pose in session 1 (baseline). In session 2, they adopted one of the depicted poses for 2 minutes before each of the 5 task blocks. (a) Expansive pose. (b) Contracted pose. Legend: Images created by Antoine Balouka-Chadwick.
Fig 3.
Means and within-subject confidence intervals for proportion of choice.
p(away): Proportion of trials in which participants moved away as opposed to toward the emotional individual. (a) Proportion in each pose and session (session 1: baseline, session 2: with pose). Contracted poses significantly increased avoidance of anger, whereas expansive poses induced no significant change. In response to fear, there were no significant changes. (b) Change in proportion of choice from session 1 to session 2 in each pose. Only the change in response to anger in the contracted pose was significant. A confidence interval not overlapping with 0 indicates a significant change. * = p < .05 in within-subject (color) or between-subject (black) t-tests.
Table 1.
Descriptive statistics and confidence intervals for proportion of away choices.
Fig 4.
Initiation time and movement duration.
Means and within-subject confidence intervals for (a) initiation time (from presentation of scene to click) and (b) movement duration (from click until release on top of a chair) in ms per pose and session (session 1: baseline without pose, session 2: with pose). (a) In both sessions and groups, initiation time was quicker for trials in which one actor expressed threat (fear or anger), compared to trials with two neutral actors. Initiation times were further quicker in the second session, with a stronger acceleration in the expansive group. (b) In both sessions and groups, movement duration was significantly longer for trials in which one actor expressed threat (fear or anger) compared to trials with two neutral actors. In the expansive group, movement duration was further slower in the second compared to the baseline session. For neither (a) nor (b), any between-pose comparisons were significant. Note that asterisks indicate significance of the threat effect in model comparisons at * p < .05; ** p < .01 and **p < .001. See Table G in S1 Appendix for all other effects.