Ming  Penga,  Alain De Beuckelaera,b,c, Lin Yuana, Renlai Zhoua,d,e,∗

a  Beijing Key  Lab of Applied Experimental Psychology, School of Psychology, Beijing Normal  University, Beijing, China

b  Department of Personnel Management and Work  and Organizational Psychology and Department of Sociology, Ghent University,  Belgium

c  Institute for Management Research, Radboud  University Nijmegen, The Netherlands

d  State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience  and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

e  Research  Center of Emotion Regulation, Beijing Normal University, Beijing,  China

Abstract   This study examined the processing of fearful and neutral expressions, which  could either be anticipated or not from a prime word (i.e., ‘fear’ or ‘neutral’) with or without predictive value.  In total, data from 17 participants (i.e., reaction times; ERP waveforms) were  analyzed. ERP data showed that the expression effect (fearful vs. neutral faces)  was different between predictable and unpredictable trials in early components  (N1, N170 and P2) after face onset. However, the expression effect was  essentially the same between predictable and unpredictable trials in late  components (N300 and P3) after face onset. These results revealed that emotion  processing of anticipated vs. non-anticipated stimuli differs mainly in the  early stage of neural activity after face onset.

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