Goal relevance shapes the behavioral impact of facial emotions: A meta-analysis

Emotionally charged stimuli can significantly influence behavior, yet it remains unclear why they do so in some contexts but not in others. A growing body of evidence provides strong empirical evidence that the impact of emotional stimuli depends on their relevance to current task demands. This perspective challenges earlier views proposing automatic behavioral responses to emotional stimuli and complements contemporary accounts emphasizing privileged emotional processing by suggesting that emotional information influences behavior primarily when it is relevant to current goals. To assess this account, we conducted a PRISMA-compliant meta-analysis, examining how emotional facial expressions influence reactive inhibitory control in the Stop-Signal and Go/No-Go task (indexed by stop-signal reaction time and commission errors, respectively) and response readiness in the Go/No-Go task (indexed by reaction times and omission errors) in healthy young adults, as a function of goal relevance. Goal relevance was tested as a categorical moderator across emotional contrasts and behavioral outcomes. Results showed that emotional valence reliably modulated inhibitory control and response readiness when emotional information was required for response selection but produced little or no systematic behavioral effects when it was task-irrelevant. Within-subject studies yielded the most robust effects, likely reflecting greater statistical power and reduced inter-individual variability. No consistent evidence of publication bias was detected. These findings support a goal-directed account of emotion–action interactions and suggest that enhanced neural processing of emotional stimuli does not necessarily translate into behavioral effects. Rather, emotional information appears to influence action primarily when it is relevant to the current goals.