We investigated the interplay of the perception of emotion and the allocation of attentional resources. We contrasted predictions taken from basic emotion theories and appraisal theories, and hypothesized that emotionally relevant information attracts attention, thus biasing perception. We used the modulation of the attentional blink and psychophysical methods, and examined the perception of static, and dynamic, fearful, happy and neutral facial expressions. We showed that the time course of the AB can be decomposed into several periods, each of which is differentially sensitive to emotion-laden information. In a paradigm designed to measure the minimum display duration necessary to make a correct gender decision on emotion-laden faces, we showed that, on average and across all emotions, participants need the face to be displayed for 50 msec, and that they make significantly less mistake when the face is fearful or happy. Results emphasise the importance of inter-individual differences.