Facial Appearance, Gender, and Emotion Expression.

Feminine facial features enhance the expressive cues associated with happiness but not sadness. This makes a woman look happier than a man even when their smiles have the same intensity. So, to correctly infer the actual happiness of a woman, one would have to subtract the effect of these facial features. We hypothesised that our perceptual system would apply this subtraction for women, but not for men. This implies that this female-specific subtraction would cause one to infer a man to be happier than a woman if both are matched for facial appearance and expression intensity. We tested this using androgynous virtual faces with equal expression intensity. As predicted, happy men were inferred to be happier than happy women, but sad men were not inferred to be sadder than sad women, supporting our hypothesis of a gender- and emotion-specific perceptual correction.

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Face gender and emotion expression: Are angry women more like men?

Journal of Vision ◽

10.1167/9.12.19 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 9 (12) ◽

pp. 19-19 ◽

Cited By ~ 74

Author(s):

U. Hess ◽

R. B. Adams ◽

K. Grammer ◽

R. E. Kleck

Keyword(s):

Emotion Expression ◽

Gender And Emotion

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Leadership and Gender Stereotyping of Emotions

Journal of Personnel Psychology ◽

10.1027/1866-5888/a000136 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 14 (3) ◽

pp. 153-162 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Andrea Fischbach ◽

Philipp W. Lichtenthaler ◽

Nina Horstmann

Keyword(s):

Emotion Expression ◽

Women's Leadership ◽

Gender Stereotyping ◽

Leadership Perceptions ◽

Target Groups ◽

Male And Female ◽

General Managers ◽

Leadership Success ◽

And Gender ◽

Successful Manager

Abstract. People believe women are more emotional than men but it remains unclear to what extent such emotion stereotypes affect leadership perceptions. Extending the think manager-think male paradigm ( Schein, 1973 ), we examined the similarity of emotion expression descriptions of women, men, and managers. In a field-based online experiment, 1,098 participants (male and female managers and employees) rated one of seven target groups on 17 emotions: men or women (in general, managers, or successful managers), or successful managers. Men in general are described as more similar to successful managers in emotion expression than are women in general. Only with the label manager or successful manager do women-successful manager similarities on emotion expression increase. These emotion stereotypes might hinder women’s leadership success.

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The Gender Typicality of Faces and Its Impact on Visual Processing and on Hiring Decisions

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000217 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 60 (6) ◽

pp. 444-452 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Lisa von Stockhausen ◽

Sara Koeser ◽

Sabine Sczesny

Keyword(s):

Visual Processing ◽

Past Research ◽

Visual Exploration ◽

Facial Appearance ◽

Leadership Roles ◽

Hiring Decisions ◽

Leadership Selection ◽

Gender Typicality ◽

Second Stage ◽

The Feminine

Past research has shown that the gender typicality of applicants’ faces affects leadership selection irrespective of a candidate’s gender: A masculine facial appearance is congruent with masculine-typed leadership roles, thus masculine-looking applicants are hired more certainly than feminine-looking ones. In the present study, we extended this line of research by investigating hiring decisions for both masculine- and feminine-typed professional roles. Furthermore, we used eye tracking to examine the visual exploration of applicants’ portraits. Our results indicate that masculine-looking applicants were favored for the masculine-typed role (leader) and feminine-looking applicants for the feminine-typed role (team member). Eye movement patterns showed that information about gender category and facial appearance was integrated during first fixations of the portraits. Hiring decisions, however, were not based on this initial analysis, but occurred at a second stage, when the portrait was viewed in the context of considering the applicant for a specific job.

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