Successful emotion recognition is a key component of our socio-emotional communication skills. However, little is known about the factors impacting males' accuracy in emotion recognition tasks. This pre-registered study examined potential candidates, focusing on the modality of stimulus presentation, emotion category, and individual hormone levels. We obtained accuracy and reaction time scores from 312 males who categorized voice, face and voice-face stimuli for nonverbal emotional content. Results showed that recognition accuracy was significantly higher in the audio-visual than in the auditory or visual modality. While no significant association was found for testosterone and cortisol alone, the effect of the interaction with recognition accuracy and reaction time was significant, but small. Our results establish that audio-visual congruent stimuli enhance recognition accuracy and provide novel empirical support by showing that the interaction of testosterone and cortisol modulate to some extent males' accuracy and response times in emotion recognition tasks.

In comparison to neutral faces, facial expressions of emotion are known to elicit attentional prioritization, mainly demonstrated by means of event-related potentials (ERPs). Recent evidence indicated that such a preferential processing can also be gained by neutral faces when associated with increased motivational salience via reward. It remains, however, an open question, whether impacts of inherent emotional salience and associated motivational salience might be integrated. In the present study, participants (N=42) learned to categorize happy and neutral faces as reward-and zero-outcome-related via an associative learning paradigm. After successful learning, a consolidation phase followed to strengthen the learned associations. ERPs were recorded throughout the experiment. In the learning phase, happy faces boosted the face-sensitive N170 and the emotion-related EPN component, compared to neutral faces, whereas effects of associated motivational salience were absent. In the subsequent consolidation phase, happy faces again elicited enhanced N170 and EPN amplitudes, while reward-associated faces -irrespective of their expressions -amplified the LPC, a component linked to higherorder evaluations. Interactions between expressions and associated outcome conditions were absent in all ERP components of interest. The present study offers new evidence that acquired salience impacts stimulus processing but independent of the effects driven by happy facial expressions.

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Successful emotion recognition is a key component of our socio-emotional communication 1 skills. However, little is known about the factors impacting males' accuracy in emotion 2 recognition tasks. This pre-registered study examined potential candidates, focusing on the 3 modality of stimulus presentation, emotion category, and individual hormone levels. We 4 obtained accuracy and reaction time scores from 312 males who categorized voice, face and 5 voice-face stimuli for nonverbal emotional content. Results showed that recognition accuracy 6 was significantly higher in the audio-visual than in the auditory or visual modality. While no 7 significant association was found for testosterone and cortisol alone, the effect of the interaction 8 with recognition accuracy and reaction time was significant, but small. Our results establish 9 that audio-visual congruent stimuli enhance recognition accuracy and provide novel empirical 10 support by showing that the interaction of testosterone and cortisol modulate to some extent 11 males' accuracy and response times in emotion recognition tasks. 12