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Mona Lisa is always happy - And only sometimes sad
Liaci, Emanuela Fischer, Andreas Heinrichs, Markus van Elst, Ludger Tebartz Kornmeier, Jürgen
Liaci, Emanuela
Fischer, Andreas
Heinrichs, Markus
van Elst, Ludger Tebartz
Kornmeier, Jürgen
Abstract
The worldwide fascination of da Vinci’s Mona Lisa has been dedicated to the emotional ambiguity of her face expression. In the present study we manipulated Mona Lisa’s mouth curvature as one potential source of ambiguity and studied how a range of happier and sadder face variants influences perception. In two experimental conditions we presented different stimulus ranges with different step sizes between stimuli along the happy-sad axis of emotional face expressions. Stimuli were presented in random order and participants indicated the perceived emotional face expression (first task) and the confidence of their response (second task). The probability of responding ‘happy’ to the original Mona Lisa was close to 100%. Furthermore, in both conditions the perceived happiness of Mona Lisa variants described sigmoidal functions of the mouth curvature. Participants’ confidence was weakest around the sigmoidal inflection points. Remarkably, the sigmoidal functions, as well as confidence values and reaction times, differed significantly between experimental conditions. Finally, participants responded generally faster to happy than to sad faces. Overall, the original Mona Lisa seems to be less ambiguous than expected. However, perception of and reaction to the emotional face content is relative and strongly depends on the used stimulus range.
Keywords
Date
2017
Type
Journal article
Journal
Scientific Reports
Book
Volume
7
Issue
1
Page Range
1-10
Article Number
ACU Department
School of Behavioural and Health Sciences
Faculty of Health Sciences
Faculty of Health Sciences
Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
Open access
License
CC BY 4.0
File Access
Open