The Influence Of Facial Sex And Male Facial Dimorphism On Expression Recognition

The ability to recognize the expressions of others plays an important role in social interaction.Previous research on the recognition of angry and sad expression with single-valence and low discriminability condition is inconsistent in their findings.At the same time,little research has been done to investigate the influence of face dimorphism on male facial expression recognition.Therefore,this research used the task of expression classification to design two studies to explore two issues separately.In study 1 we explored the influence of facial sex on the recognition of angry and sad expressions and asked participants to classify the angry and sad expressions on males and females faces;In study 2 we explored whether the dimorphism of male’s face influenced expression recognition by evaluative associations or stereotype associations,adopting the task of expression classification and the comparative task experimental paradigm that used by Bijlstra et al.,so three small experiments were designed,namely study 2a,study 2b,and study 2c.In study2 a we explored whether the masculine and feminine characteristics of male’s face influenced recognition of male’s happy and angry expression,and required participants to classify happy and angry expressions on masculine and feminine faces;In study 2b we explored whether the masculine and feminine characteristics of male’s face influenced the recognition of male’s happy and sad expressions,and required participants to classify happy and sad expressions on masculine and feminine faces;In study 2c,under the condition of excluding the effect of valence,we explored whether the stereotype associations path played a role in the influence of male facial dimorphism on male facial expression recognition,and required participants to classify angry and sad expressions on masculine and feminine faces.The results revealed that:(1)facial sex cues influenced the recognition of angry and sad expressions,and the responses to female sad expressions and male angry expressions were faster and more accurate;(2)the dimorphic feature of male faces significantly influenced the recognition of happy and angry in dual-valence comparative context,the difference between happy expression recognition of masculine and feminine faces was not significant,and the angry expression recognition of masculine faces was faster and more accurate than that of feminine faces.At the same time,male faces dimorphism moderated the happy face recognition advantage in male happy and angry expression classification tasks;(3)the dimorphic feature of male faces did not influence the recognition of happy and sad in dual-valence comparative context,therewas no significant difference in categorization for the masculine happy and feminine happy faces,and there was no significant difference in categorization speed for masculine sad and feminine sad faces.More correct were made categorizing sad of feminine faces than than that of masculine faces.The dimorphism of male faces did not moderate the happy face recognition advantage in classification tasks of happy and sad expressions;(4)the dimorphic feature of male faces significantly influenced the recognition of angry and sad in single-valence comparative context,the responses to feminine sad expressions and masculine angry expressions were faster and more accurate.CONCLUSION: Gender-emotional stereotypes,in which men and anger are more closely linked,and women and sadness are more closely linked,affect the recognition of angry and sad expressions.The stereotypes that masculinity and anger are more closely related influence the recognition of male angry expressions in happy and angry expression classification tasks and in angry and sad expression classification tasks.The expression recognition of male facial dimorphism with masculine and feminine feature is not influenced by the evaluation association path.