Sex differences in face processing: Are women less lateralized and faster than men?

Sex differences of hemispheric lateralization for faces and Chinese characters in early perceptual processing

“…Importantly, the N170 amplitude elicited by faces was larger in the right hemisphere than in the left hemisphere in males, and was similar in both hemispheres in females. These results are also consistent with the previous studies [13][14][15][17][18][19]. Together, our results and previous studies suggest that the N170 response in face processing is right hemisphere dominant in males and bilateral in females, and is stable across different tasks and cultures.…”

“…We chose long-term objects of expertise (face and word) as stimuli, and line drawing, a familiar object of non-expertise, as control stimulus. Given the existing evidence of sex differences for face [13][14][15][17][18][19] and word processing [20,21], but see [22], we expected to replicate these sex differences for hemispheric lateralization of faces and address sex differences for Chinese characters. As noted above the links between faces and words, we also expected to find that the degree of hemispheric lateralization of Chinese characters would be significantly related to the degree of hemispheric lateralization of faces.…”

Sex differences in facial scanning: Similarities and dissimilarities between infants and adults

“…Sex differences in hemispheric activation during face processing support this hypothesis. Data from infants, children, and adults show females and males rely relatively equally on the right hemisphere (RH) during face processing, but females rely more on the left hemisphere (LH) than males, and LH activity reflects localized processing (de Schonen & Mathivet, 1990; Everhart, Shucard, Quatrin, & Shucard, 2001; Godard & Fiori, 2010). …”

Orienting to face expression during encoding improves men's recognition of own gender faces

“…As expected, women accurately recognized more faces than men, F(1,195) = 13.57, p b .001, d = 0.59 (M females = .39, SE = .01, M males = .33, SE = .01) and female faces were better recognized than male faces overall, F(1,195) = 43.79, p b .001, d = 0.36 (M females = .39, SE = .01, M males = .34, SE = .01), as is often found (Ellis, Shepherd, & Bruce, 1973;Godard & Fiori, 2010;Ino, Nakai, Azuma, Kimura, & Fukuyama, 2010;Rehnman & Herlitz, 2007). However, there was a significant interaction of participant gender and test face gender such that women recognized female faces much better than male faces (d = 0.72), but men recognized female and male faces with similar accuracy (d = 0.12), F(1,195) = 23.56, p b .001, difference in d = 0.60.…”