Emotional interference in isolation and in others’ presence

Assuming the importance of a social dimension in appraisal of emotion, here we investigate how social presence impact emotional interference effects. This modulation is hypothesized both because social presence is expected to facilitate emotion recognition and to increases executive control functions. In one experiment participants perform two different emotional Stroop tasks that use either emotional words or emotional facial expressions as targets versus distractors, either in a co-action or in an isolated setting. Results show that the social presence reduces interference effects. However the evidence of increases of control in presence of others is less clear when the distractor is an emotional face (versus an emotional word) and this happens particularly for angry expressions. Faces and the expression of emotional anger attentional capture seem not to be overcome by an increase of control promoted by the presence of others, suggesting the higher relevance of these stimuli in social settings.