Gender affects understanding kind and hostile intentions based on dyadic body movements

Abstract

Understanding kind and hostile communicative intentions that are conveyed by others is essential for successful human interaction. However, it still remains unknown whether gender differences exist in understanding others’ social interactive intentions, especially behind their body movements. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the gender effects in understanding kind and hostile intentions (versus neutral intention) displayed by two actors (or actresses) and their body movements. We recruited 60 participants from a university in China and recorded the accuracy and reaction times when participants performed an intention inference task. Significant main effects of the gender on accuracies were found. The results showed female observers performed better than males on accuracy of intention inference task. The outcome also indicated observers exhibited higher accuracy of understanding intentions for actors than actresses. Moreover, the results indicated higher accuracy and shorter reaction times for understanding hostile intention than those for kind intention. In addition, there was an interaction effect between the gender of actor/actress and intention conditions on reaction times. In particular, the reaction times for understanding actors’ kind intentions was longer than those for actresses; whereas the reaction times for understanding hostile intentions showed a reverse pattern. In conclusion, the evidence demonstrated that behavioral processing underlying social intention understanding differs with different types of communicative intentions, which was also moderated by the gender of the actors/actresses. The findings of the study will facilitate a better understanding of gender vulnerability in neuropsychiatric impairment.