A female advantage in the recognition of emotional facial expressions: test of an evolutionary hypothesis

Abstract

A set of computerized tasks was used to investigate sex differences in the speed and accuracy of emotion recognition in 62 men and women of reproductive age. Evolutionary theories have posited that female superiority in the perception of emotion might arise from women's near-universal responsibility for child-rearing. Two variants of the child-rearing hypothesis predict either across-theboard female superiority in the discrimination of emotional expressions (battachment promotionQ hypothesis) or a female superiority that is restricted to expressions of negative emotion (bfitness threatQ hypothesis). Therefore, we sought to evaluate whether the expression of the sex difference is influenced by the valence of the emotional signal (Positive or Negative). The results showed that women were faster than men at recognizing both positive and negative emotions from facial cues, supporting the attachment promotion hypothesis. Support for the fitness threat hypothesis also was found, in that the sex difference was accentuated for negative emotions. There was no evidence that the female superiority was learned through previous childcare experience or that it was derived from a sex difference in simple perceptual speed. The results suggest that evolved mechanisms, not domaingeneral learning, underlie the sex difference in recognition of facial emotions.

Association between trait emotional awareness and dorsal anterior cingulate activity during emotion is arousal-dependent

“…This hypothesis is supported by the fact that self-focus and negative affect are more strongly related in women than men (Mor and Winquist, 2002) and may relate to the observation that women often direct attention towards their own emotions via rumination (Nolen-Hoeksema and Jackson, 2001). In addition, the sex difference in the association between trait emotional awareness and dACC activity is consistent with evidence that women tend to process emotional information in a more complex way than men, as indicated by a tendency for women to manifest greater complexity in emotional experience (Feldman-Barrett et al, 2000), greater ability to differentiate between exteroceptive emotional stimuli (Hall and Matsumoto, 2004;Fischer, 2000;Hampson et al, 2006) and greater complexity in the recall of autobiographical memories that involve emotion (Cahill 2003).…”

“…There are several reasons to hypothesize that there may be differences between the sexes. On average, women score higher than men on the LEAS (Feldman Barrett et al, 2000), in addition to superior performance on tasks involving categorization of emotional stimuli (Hall and Matsumoto, 2004) and verbal and nonverbal judgments of emotion (Fischer, 2000;Hampson et al, 2006). Volumetric studies have shown that women have greater amounts of grey matter in the ACC than men (Good et al, 2001) and neuroimaging studies have reported greater activation of dACC in response to emotional stimuli (especially negative stimuli) in women than men (Wrase et al, 2003).…”

Can children with autism read emotions from the eyes? The Eyes Test revisited

“…When considering a particular type of experience, for example, Camras, Ribordy, Hill, and Martino (1990) and Pollak, Cicchetti, Hornung and Reed (2000) showed that maltreated children tended to perform better than controls in the recognition of anger in masked expressions of emotion, whereas adults with social anxiety disorder performed significantly less well than controls in the recognition of facial expressions of anger (Montagne , Schutters, Westenberg, Van Honk, Kessels & De Haan, 2006). Difference in RTs between women (faster) and men was found to be largest for facial expressions of anger in a study by Hampson, van Anders and Mullin (2006). More importantly, Ackerman et al (2006) found that, particularly in conditions in which cognitive resources are limited, the typical in-group homogeneity effect for face recognition was reversed for angry faces: effective self-protection induces sensitivity to facial signals that may be particularly relevant for the perceiver's functional outcomes (Fox et al, 2000;Maner et al, 2003;Ohman, Flykt & Esteves, 2001; see Schupp et al, 2004 for ERP evidence).…”

Do Men Conform More Than Women in the Recognition and Labeling of Emotions?

“…The research included strong focus on various kinds of interpersonal differences in emotion recognition -e.g., differences between healthy and unhealthy population (e.g., Bora, Velakoulis, & Walterfang, 2016;Ludlow, Garrood, Lawrence, & Gutierrez, 2014;Wegbreit et al, 2015), cultural differences (e.g., Gul & Humphreys, 2014;Prado et al, 2014) and there are also a couple of new studies on gender differences. When asked to recognize emotional facial expressions, women are generally faster (Hampson, van Anders, & Mullin, 2006), more accurate (make fewer errors and distinguish various emotions more easily; Labrecht, Kreifelts, & Wildgruber, 2014;Lawrence, Cambell, & Skuse, 2015;Montagne, Kessels, Frigerio, de Haan, & Perrett, 2005;Thayer & Johnsen, 2000), and more sensitive (react faster to a shift from a neutral facial expression to an emotional facial expression) (Montagne et al, 2005) than men. Female superiority in this domain has been shown to be particularly true for facial expressions of negative emotions (Hampson et al, 2006).…”