Abstract
Negative social evaluations represent social threats and elicit negative emotions such as anger or fear. Positive social evaluations, by contrast, may increase self-esteem and generate positive emotions such as happiness and pride. Gender differences are likely to shape both the perception and expression of positive and negative social evaluations. Yet, current knowledge is limited by a reliance on studies that used static images of individual expressers with limited external validity. Furthermore, only few studies considered gender differences on both the expresser and perceiver side. The present study approached these limitations by utilizing a naturalistic stimulus set displaying nine males and nine females (expressers) delivering social evaluative sentences to 32 female and 26 male participants (perceivers). Perceivers watched 30 positive, 30 negative, and 30 neutral messages while facial electromyography (EMG) was continuously recorded and subjective ratings were obtained. Results indicated that men expressing positive evaluations elicited stronger EMG responses in both perceiver genders. Arousal was rated higher when positive evaluations were expressed by the opposite gender. Thus, gender differences need to be more explicitly considered in research of social cognition and affective science using naturalistic social stimuli.
Highlights
Gender differences have been fascinating scientists and lay people alike
Self-Report Measures Valence The 2 (Expresser gender: male vs. female) × 3 (Emotion condition: negative, neutral, positive) × 2 (Perceiver gender: male vs. female) repeated measures ANOVA of valence revealed a main effect of Expresser gender, F(1,56) = 4.16, p = 0.046, η2p = 0.07, with male expressers being perceived as more unpleasant than female expressers (MeanDiff = 0.92, p = 0.046, 95% CImale expresser−female expresser [0.017, 1.83])
As expected from previous research with this stimulus set, there was a main effect of Emotion condition, F(2,112) = 351.00, p < 0.001, η2p = 0.86, ε = 0.69
Summary
Gender differences have been fascinating scientists and lay people alike. The influence of cognitive abilities, behavior, and personality traits on gender differences is well documented (e.g., Bussey and Bandura, 1999; Taylor et al, 2000; Chapman et al, 2007). Gender differences in general reactivity to emotional stimuli such as affective pictures or films are less studied (e.g., Bradley et al, 2001; Derntl et al, 2009, 2010; Bagley et al, 2011). Research focusing on gender differences in interpersonal emotional contexts that examines. Gender differences in emotional social interactions both the stimulus side (expresser gender) and the perceiver side (participant gender) is even more scarce. It may reasonably be argued that this scarcity of research contrasts with the multitude of gender stereotypes regarding emotions in social interactions in the general population. The present study was designed to shed more light on this issue
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