Shared Attention Amplifies the Neural Processing of Emotional Faces

Sharing an experience, without communicating, affects peo-ple’s subjective perception of the experience, often by intensifying it. We investigated the neural mechanisms underlying shared attention by implementing an EEG study where participants attended to and rated the intensity of emotional faces, simultaneously or independently. Participants performed the task in three experimental conditions: (a) alone; (b) simultaneously next to each other in pairs, without receiving feedback of the other’s responses (shared without feedback); and (c) simultaneously while receiving the feedback (shared with feedback). We focused on two face-sensitive ERP components: The amplitude of the N170 was greater in the “shared with feedback” condition compared to the alone condition, reflecting a top–down.