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Threat in the Golden Years

As we age, we tend to look more fondly on the world and on our memories, but does that mean we can’t detect threat?

While a great deal of research indicates that older individuals tend to focus on pleasurable or non-threatening aspects of experience and memories, it is unclear whether this means they are less able to recognize threating behaviors in other individuals. This is what Drs. Mara Mather and Marisa Knight sought to determine in a 2006 article.

This question tries to get at even deeper questions as to how the brain processes threatening information. Because our threat detection is mediated by the brain’s amygdala, perhaps this functions less effectively as we age. Alternatively, this may be due to “strategic processing” where older individuals’ brains use positive inclinations to better process information.

In order to critically evaluate this question, both young and older participants were recruited for an experimental study, asking preliminary questions to confirm that the older participants did tend to experience a more positive affect. Each participant was then exposed to a selection of nine facial images.

Half of the participants were only shown neutral faces, while another half had one emotional expression mixed into these neutral faces. Some of these treatment faces were threatening, but others were sad or friendly. After being exposed to the treatment, each individual was asked to identify whether the face appeared to be threatening.

Contrary to some of the theoretical expectations, age seemed to make no impact on accurate identification. They were also able to recognize threatening faces more quickly, confirming previous research, but age did not seem to make a difference here.

So, what does this tell us about our ability to detect threat? And more specifically, how does this help us do so?

First, it tells us that threat detection is a very fundamental underlying process in our brains. While a great deal of cognitive processes change as we age, it is notable that this one does not seem to.

Second, the almost instantaneous nature of threat detection not only underscores its fundamental role but also gives us practical tips on how to detect threat. Just like facial recognition, our brain automatically processes faces and gives us certain intuitions.

However, while it is good to trust these intuitions, they might not always be accurate. Our brains are pretty incredible, but they are not infallible. This is a great reason to get real, professional training to teach our brain what to look for. This can make an already incredible skill even more formidable!

Can You Spot the Anger?

While it may be tricky to say if a face is threatening, our brain may already be deciding for us.

This may sound far-fetched, but as Dr. Harald Schupp and a team of researchers found in 2004, we are hardwired on an evolutionary level to experience a fear response upon detecting perceived threat in another face. While we may not know what is happening, at a physiological level our body certainly reacts.

This research is deeply rooted in our evolutionary history. As we have previously written, many of our universal emotional expressions are based in how our faces evolved, such as narrowed eyes to tune out disgusting imagery. Dr. Schupp applies this sort of insight to how we react to a threatening face.

Essentially, the perception of threat in another’s face is deeply intertwined with our fear response. Past research found that we detect threat in faces much more quickly than more positive emotions, and our brains quickly prepare for the worst. Dr. Schupp’s work drives this insight further by looking at the basic neurological response that is triggered upon perceiving threat in another’s face.

In the study, a small group of participants were recruited and subsequently exposed to a series of images representing basic emotions: threat/anger, happiness, and a neutral face. The participants were asked to rate each face based on the extent to which it seemed either friendly or threatening, but they were only exposed to the face for a brief moment.

During this process, brain activity was monitored in order to observe changes in activity and intensity at the neurological level. This allowed them to track both the differences between brain activity in threatening and friendly recognitions and also the speed at which both occur.

Consistent with their hypotheses, the study found that people’s brains show markedly different activity almost immediately. However, the difference between a threat recognition and a friendly recognition was much greater than that between friendly and neutral, suggesting that our brains are responding in a categorically way to threat than to other facial expressions.

Similarly, while threatening faces were noticed much more quickly, they were also marked by prolonged analysis shown by activity in the brain. Our recognition does not stop at recognizing threat, as it does when we recognize a friendly visage. Instead, it continues to process the stimulus in order to formulate an accurate response, such as flight or fight.

You may be wondering how such a dense neurological analysis fits into practical tips for detecting aggression in others or how any of this relates to the goal of being more aware of domestic violence.

In fact, the understanding that our brain has a deep and instinctive reaction to threat helps us be better aware of what is going on instinctively when we see a face. Some faces may inspire a sense of subconscious anxiety or consternation, and this may very well be linked to our neurological recognition processes.

Just as we mentioned last week, better understanding how we recognize threat is incredibly important both for those who are at risk for violence but also for observers and friends who may notice violent potential in others. This is just one path towards a better understanding these issues, with another being formal training in threat detection with Humintell.

Domestic Violence Awareness Month

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and while this topic may be an uncomfortable one, understanding domestic violence and how to detect and prevent it can save lives.

One way of achieving this is to better train law enforcement to identify signs of aggression and violence. This involves significant people reading and emotional detection skills, as we seek to learn what microexpressions betray that feeling of aggression. As Humintell’s Drs. David Matsumoto and Hyisung Hwang found, aggression is predicted by fleeting and unconscious but also very telling facial expressions.

This research, published in the Journal of Threat Assessment and Management in 2014 relied on a series of four studies which consistently found that observers with training in law enforcement tended to reliably identify the facial signs that predict aggression and violence.

However, those without much experience witnessing or experiencing physical assaults did not tend to do well in selecting the expression that predicted violence. Drs. Matsumoto and Hwang attributed this to the reliance on stereotypical presentations of aggressive expressions, which tended to be incorrect.

Their studies also help map out exactly what the expression in question looks like, but this also grapples with the differences between types of aggression: premeditated and spontaneous.

For instance, the face of someone considering a premeditated assault is characterized by lowered brows, raised eyelids, and the tightening of lips. This appears as though they are seeking to control their expression of anger, evincing determination and concentration.

Such an expression must be contrasted with the “loss of control face,” which is seen in those who are about to attack after having just lost their temper. This expression also shows lowered brows and raised eyelids, but now the eyelids are even more starkly raised, creating a bulging, staring quality. Again, the lips are tightened, but the lower lip is not raised. The raising of the lower lip is often associated with efforts to control one’s emotions which is not present in this form of aggression.

So, how is this information helpful? And how does it relate to Domestic Violence Awareness?

Well, there are a couple lessons to draw from here. First, we have the potential to detect when someone is going to commit acts of aggression. Learning how to do this is important both for detecting when someone will attack us but also if someone is struggling to refrain from or is planning to attack others.

Second, without training, many of us are very bad at realizing this potential. While law enforcement officers were shown to be quite good at it across cultures, laypeople stand to gain a lot from a formal training procedure.

If nothing else, we hope that focusing on this potential can also help us become more aware of signs of aggression around us, for our benefit and for that of others.

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