Naslov
The effects of facial expressions and tears on the speed of sex recognition

Autori
Švegar, Domagoj

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Izvornik
Consortium of European Research on Emotion Conference / - Berlin : Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2014, 42-42

Skup
Consortium of European Research on Emotion Conference

Mjesto i datum
Berlin, Njemačka, 27.03.2014. - 28.03.2014

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
facial expressions ; emotions ; tears ; sex recognition

Sažetak
The objective of the experiment was to investigate how facial expressions and tears affect the speed of sex recognition. Photographs from Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces database (KDEF) were used as stimuli material and presented to 186 participants (95 male and 91 female), who were divided into three experimental groups. Each group was presented with 40 photographs of human emotional expressions. The pictures showed no clear signs of sex markers (beard, jewelry, make-up, hair, etc.). The first group viewed sad expressions, the second crying faces while the control group was exposed to neutral expressions. In order to keep idiosyncratic facial features constant, each stimuli set contained different expressions of the same models, so the only variable aspect of stimuli within each set was the emotional expression and tears. The participants’ task was to recognize whether the faces were male or female. ANOVA revealed that both main effects (sex of participants and expression of models) were significant, together with the interaction. Women took significantly less time to recognize models’ sex than men. Regardless of their sex, participants needed significantly less time to recognize the sex of crying faces in comparison to neutral and sad faces. Post-hoc analysis showed that facial expressions of models affected only the reaction times of female participants. While men were responding equally slow in all conditions, women were extremely fast in the condition of crying faces, moderately fast when exposed to sad faces, but as slow as men in the control condition. Since women are more sensitive to signs of other people suffering, observing sad and especially crying people might activate their evolutionally developed mechanism for feeling empathy, helping and providing support. Additional experiments are currently being conducted in order to examine the external validity of these findings and to investigate if tears elicit approaching behavior.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Psihologija

Napomena
The research was conducted within the project "Personality, emotions and social processes as determinants of health outcomes" which is funded by the University of Rijeka.

POVEZANOST RADA