scholarly journals EMOSEX – emotion prevails over sex during implicit judgment of faces

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Korb ◽  
Nace Mikus ◽  
Claudia Massaccesi ◽  
Jack Grey ◽  
Suvarnalata Xanthate Duggirala ◽  
...  

Appraisals can be influenced by cultural beliefs and stereotypes. In line with this, past research has shown that judgments about the emotional expression of a face are influenced by the face’s sex, and vice versa that judgments about the sex of a person somewhat depend on the person’s facial expression. For example, participants associate anger with male faces, and female faces with happiness or sadness. However, the strength and the bidirectionality of these effects remain debated. Moreover, the interplay of a stimulus’ emotion and sex remains mostly unknown in the auditory domain. To investigate these questions, we created a novel stimulus set of 121 avatar faces and 121 human voices (available at https://bit.ly/2JkXrpy) with matched, fine-scale changes along the emotional (happy to angry) and sexual (male to female) dimensions. In a first experiment (N=76), we found clear evidence for the mutual influence of facial emotion and sex cues on ratings, and moreover for larger implicit (task-irrelevant) effects of stimulus’ emotion than of sex. These findings were replicated and extended in two preregistered studies – one laboratory categorisation study using the same face stimuli (N=108; https://osf.io/ve9an), and one online study with vocalisations (N=72; https://osf.io/vhc9g). Overall, results show that the associations of maleness-anger and femaleness-happiness exist across sensory modalities, and suggest that emotions expressed in the face and voice cannot be entirely disregarded, even when attention is mainly focused on determining stimulus’ sex. We discuss the relevance of these findings for cognitive and neural models of face and voice processing.

2021 ◽  
pp. 003329412110184
Author(s):  
Paola Surcinelli ◽  
Federica Andrei ◽  
Ornella Montebarocci ◽  
Silvana Grandi

Aim of the research The literature on emotion recognition from facial expressions shows significant differences in recognition ability depending on the proposed stimulus. Indeed, affective information is not distributed uniformly in the face and recent studies showed the importance of the mouth and the eye regions for a correct recognition. However, previous studies used mainly facial expressions presented frontally and studies which used facial expressions in profile view used a between-subjects design or children faces as stimuli. The present research aims to investigate differences in emotion recognition between faces presented in frontal and in profile views by using a within subjects experimental design. Method The sample comprised 132 Italian university students (88 female, Mage = 24.27 years, SD = 5.89). Face stimuli displayed both frontally and in profile were selected from the KDEF set. Two emotion-specific recognition accuracy scores, viz., frontal and in profile, were computed from the average of correct responses for each emotional expression. In addition, viewing times and response times (RT) were registered. Results Frontally presented facial expressions of fear, anger, and sadness were significantly better recognized than facial expressions of the same emotions in profile while no differences were found in the recognition of the other emotions. Longer viewing times were also found when faces expressing fear and anger were presented in profile. In the present study, an impairment in recognition accuracy was observed only for those emotions which rely mostly on the eye regions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura. R. Koenen ◽  
Robert. J. Pawlik ◽  
Adriane Icenhour ◽  
Ljubov Petrakova ◽  
Katarina Forkmann ◽  
...  

AbstractThe formation and persistence of negative pain-related expectations by classical conditioning remain incompletely understood. We elucidated behavioural and neural correlates involved in the acquisition and extinction of negative expectations towards different threats across sensory modalities. In two complementary functional magnetic resonance imaging studies in healthy humans, differential conditioning paradigms combined interoceptive visceral pain with somatic pain (study 1) and aversive tone (study 2) as exteroceptive threats. Conditioned responses to interoceptive threat predictors were enhanced in both studies, consistently involving the insula and cingulate cortex. Interoceptive threats had a greater impact on extinction efficacy, resulting in disruption of ongoing extinction (study 1), and selective resurgence of interoceptive CS-US associations after complete extinction (study 2). In the face of multiple threats, we preferentially learn, store, and remember interoceptive danger signals. As key mediators of nocebo effects, conditioned responses may be particularly relevant to clinical conditions involving disturbed interoception and chronic visceral pain.


Author(s):  
Fangfang Wen ◽  
Bin Zuo ◽  
Yang Wang ◽  
Shuhan Ma ◽  
Shijie Song ◽  
...  

AbstractPast research on women’s preferences for male facial masculinity in Western cultures has produced inconsistent results. Some inconsistency may be related to the use of different facial stimulus manipulations (e.g., between-sex sexual dimorphic facial manipulation or within-sex sexual dimorphic facial manipulation) that do not perfectly avoid non-facial cues, and pregnancy status may also influence women’s face preferences. We therefore recruited pregnant and nonpregnant Chinese women and manipulated the sexual dimorphism of male facial stimuli to explore the influences of manipulation methods, non-facial cues, and pregnancy status on face preferences. Results showed that: (1) in contrast with a general masculinity preference observed in Western cultures, both pregnant and nonpregnant Chinese women preferred feminized and neutral male faces generally; (2) pregnant women’s preference for feminized male faces was stable across manipulation methods, while nonpregnant women preferred feminized male faces except under between-sex sexual dimorphism manipulation; and (3) manipulation methods, rather than non-facial cues, influenced participants’ face preferences. Specifically, women showed the strongest preferences for femininity when face stimuli were manipulated by within-sex sexual dimorphic facial manipulation, followed by unmanipulated faces and between-sex sexual dimorphic facial manipulation. This effect was stronger for nonpregnant women in the unmanipulated condition and for pregnant women in the between-sex sexual dimorphic facial manipulation. This research provides empirical evidence of women’s preferences for sexual dimorphism in male faces in a non-Western culture, as well as the effects of facial manipulation methods, pregnancy status, and the interactions between these factors.


i-Perception ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 204166952110563
Author(s):  
Ronja Mueller ◽  
Sandra Utz ◽  
Claus-Christian Carbon ◽  
Tilo Strobach

Recognizing familiar faces requires a comparison of the incoming perceptual information with mental face representations stored in memory. Mounting evidence indicates that these representations adapt quickly to recently perceived facial changes. This becomes apparent in face adaptation studies where exposure to a strongly manipulated face alters the perception of subsequent face stimuli: original, non-manipulated face images then appear to be manipulated, while images similar to the adaptor are perceived as “normal.” The face adaptation paradigm serves as a good tool for investigating the information stored in facial memory. So far, most of the face adaptation studies focused on configural (second-order relationship) face information, mainly neglecting non-configural face information (i.e., that does not affect spatial face relations), such as color, although several (non-adaptation) studies were able to demonstrate the importance of color information in face perception and identification. The present study therefore focuses on adaptation effects on saturation color information and compares the results with previous findings on brightness. The study reveals differences in the effect pattern and robustness, indicating that adaptation effects vary considerably even within the same class of non-configural face information.


Author(s):  
John Manzo

Contemporary social life is often depicted, in and out of the social sciences, as an ever-worsening subterfuge of alienation, ennui, and the systematic destruction of traditional, human-scaled, publicly-accessible, “organic” sociality that people once enjoyed. In this paper I do not contend that these trends in our social and commercial landscape are not happening. I will instead contend that conventional face-to-face sociability thrives even in the face of the loss of many traditional public meeting places. My focus in this piece is on social interaction in independent cafes that are known, and that self-identify, as what coffee connoisseurs term “third-wave” coffeehouses. Deploying the analytic perspective of ethnomethodology, which prioritizes and problematizes the observed and reported lived experiences of research subjects, I argue not only that “authentic” sociality flourishes in these spaces but I also consider the role of shop employees—baristas—in them and uncover their perceptions concerning social interaction between themselves and customers. As such I not only question prevailing understandings about the “death” of traditional sociability but also add to past research on the coffeehouse as social form by problematizing, for the first time, the work world of the baristas and their interactions with customers.


Author(s):  
Stanislav Malkin

The Interbellum era was marked by the competition of various interpretations of guerrilla warfare and small wars, which were a practical expression of rebel activity in the colonies and on the outskirts of the British Empire. Discussions in that regard reflected both theoretical and doctrinal contradictions and the bureaucratic rivalry between the departments responsible for its internal security and the confrontation between the military and civilian authorities over the boundaries of their responsibility to preserve colonial order. The evolution of the meaning of the concept of “guerilla warfare” within the British military thought in the first half of the 20th century is demonstrated by highlighting the stages of the process, historical reconstruction of the levels of discussion of this topic in a professional environment, and identifying the degree of mutual influence of its basic provisions in the face of budgetary constraints and new challenges to colonial rule after the First World War. This approach allowed to specify ideas about the place and role of the army in the functioning of the internal security system of the British Empire at the final stage of its existence. The analysis of the semantics and content of the “guerilla warfare” concept between two world wars makes it possible to apply a new approach to the issue of disagreements between the military and civilian authorities over the choice of the military and political course in the conflicts of this kind. Thus, the identified differences may be viewed as a result not of the bureaucratic differences only, but as the absence of the unified understanding of the “modern rebellion” problem among the military as itself.


1990 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
David D. Ackerly ◽  
Judy M. Rankin-De-Merona ◽  
William A. Rodrigues

ABSTRACTThe densities of the breeding populations and the sex of all flowering individuals were recorded for five dioecious canopy tree species of Central Amazonian Myristicaceae, in 11 study areas of the Minimum Critical size of Ecosystems Project totalling 22.5 ha. Adult population densities were extremely low, ranging from 0.38 to 1.61 ha–1 for the five species studied. In a 10 ha study plot the mean distance to the nearest flowering conspecific ranged from 48 to 100 m, while the mean distance to the nearest opposite sex conspecific was 147 m. The two most abundant species, Iryanthera macrophylla and Virola calophylla, both showed male-biased sex ratios, of 23:9 and 20:6, respectively. The size class distribution of males, females and non-flowering individuals in V. calophylla suggests that earlier reproductive maturation of male plants may provide a partial explanation for this bias. In I. macrophylla, since 95% of the individuals were observed flowering, the observed ratio is representative of the population, and may be caused by sex shifts from male to female. The low reproductive densities, combined with the skewed sex ratios and overlapping generations of these species, create very small effective breeding populations, placing species such as these at great risk in the face of deforestation and habitat fragmentation.


2007 ◽  
Vol 97 (2) ◽  
pp. 1671-1683 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. M. Gothard ◽  
F. P. Battaglia ◽  
C. A. Erickson ◽  
K. M. Spitler ◽  
D. G. Amaral

The amygdala is purported to play an important role in face processing, yet the specificity of its activation to face stimuli and the relative contribution of identity and expression to its activation are unknown. In the current study, neural activity in the amygdala was recorded as monkeys passively viewed images of monkey faces, human faces, and objects on a computer monitor. Comparable proportions of neurons responded selectively to images from each category. Neural responses to monkey faces were further examined to determine whether face identity or facial expression drove the face-selective responses. The majority of these neurons (64%) responded both to identity and facial expression, suggesting that these parameters are processed jointly in the amygdala. Large fractions of neurons, however, showed pure identity-selective or expression-selective responses. Neurons were selective for a particular facial expression by either increasing or decreasing their firing rate compared with the firing rates elicited by the other expressions. Responses to appeasing faces were often marked by significant decreases of firing rates, whereas responses to threatening faces were strongly associated with increased firing rate. Thus global activation in the amygdala might be larger to threatening faces than to neutral or appeasing faces.


Perception ◽  
10.1068/p6291 ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 702-707
Author(s):  
Robert A Johnston ◽  
Eleanor Tomlinson ◽  
Chris Jones ◽  
Alan Weaden

The face-processing skills of people with schizophrenia were compared with those of a group of unimpaired individuals. Participants were asked to make speeded face-classification decisions to faces previously rated as being typical or distinctive. The schizophrenic group responded more slowly than the unimpaired group; however, both groups demonstrated the customary sensitivity to the distinctiveness of the face stimuli. Face-classification latencies made to typical faces were shorter than those made to distinctive faces. The implication of this finding with the schizophrenic group is discussed with reference to accounts of face-processing deficits attributed to these individuals.


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