Abstract

MENEZES, Carolina Baptista et al. Gender and the capacity to identify facial emotional expressions. Estud. psicol. (Natal) [online]. 2017, vol.22, n.1, pp. 1-9. ISSN 1413-294X.  http://dx.doi.org/10.22491/1678-4669.20170001.

Recognizing emotional expressions is enabled by a fundamental sociocognitive mechanism of human nature. This study compared 114 women and 104 men on the identification of basic emotions on a recognition task that used culturally adapted and validated faces to the Brazilian context. It was also investigated whether gender differences on emotion recognition would vary according to different exposure times. Women were generally better at detecting facial expressions, but an interaction suggested that the female superiority was particularly observed for anger, disgust, and surprise; results did not change according to age or time exposure. However, regardless of sex, total accuracy improved as presentation times increased, but only fear and anger significantly differed between the presentation times. Hence, in addition to the support of the evolutionary hypothesis of the female superiority in detecting facial expressions of emotions, recognition of facial expressions also depend on the time available to correctly identify an expression.

Keywords : facial expression; emotion; gender; exposure time.

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