EmoSex: Emotion prevails over sex in implicit judgments of faces and voices.

Korb, Sebastian; Mikuš, Nace; Massaccesi, Claudia; Grey, Jack; Duggirala, Suvarnalata Xanthate; Kotz, Sonja A.; Méhu, Marc

doi:10.1037/emo0001089

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 100 publications

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“…Furthermore, other studies have demonstrated that experience with acoustic stimuli influences how the stimuli are processed (Demirkaplan & Hacıhabiboğlu, 2020;Wisniewski et al, 2012). Finally, previous studies found evidence for stereotypic beliefs and influences of gender on the perceived expression of vocal affect (Bonebright et al, 1996;Korb et al, 2023). These results are in line with our findings that the effect of affective voice was more pronounced for male voices played at high intensities.…”

Section: Listener's Expectations Influence Distance Perception Of Aff...supporting

confidence: 92%

The influence of affective voice on sound distance perception

Kroczek,

Roßkopf,

Stärz

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Affective stimuli in our environment are important sources of information as they indicate reward or threat and thereby relate to approach and avoidance behavior. Previous findings have indicated that affective stimuli do not only influence behavioral responses but may also bias the perception of the stimuli (e.g., size, height, distance). Typically, such biases have been described in the visual domain, while it remains unclear whether similar effects can be observed for auditory stimuli. The present study asked whether the affective dimension of an auditory voice stimulus (i.e., angry vs neutral) would affect at which distance the stimulus source is perceived. Therefore, two Virtual Reality experiments were conducted in which participants listened to auditory stimuli played via loudspeakers while the position of the loudspeakers was unknown to the participants. In the first experiment (N = 44), participants had to actively place a visually presented virtual agent or virtual loudspeaker at the perceived sound source in an empty room. In the second experiment (N = 32), participants were placed in front of several virtual agents or virtual loudspeakers and had to indicate the sound source by looking at the person or loudspeaker who was thought to produce the sound. Results in both preregistered experiments consistently showed that participants estimated the location of angry voice stimuli at greater distances than the location of neutral voice stimuli. We discuss that neither emotional nor motivational biases may account for these results. Instead, distance estimates seem to rely on listeners' representations regarding the relationship between vocal affect and acoustic characteristic.

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Section: Listener's Expectations Influence Distance Perception Of Aff...supporting

confidence: 92%

The influence of affective voice on sound distance perception

Kroczek,

Roßkopf,

Stärz

et al. 2023

Preprint

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“…The formula of the model was: choice ~ emotion + fNMES + ambiguity + emotion: fNMES + emotion: ambiguity + ambiguity:fNMES + (1 | Participant). For a similar analysis, see Korb et al (2023).…”

Section: Data Preparation and Analysesmentioning

confidence: 93%

Zygomaticus activation through facial neuromuscular electric stimulation (fNMES) induces happiness perception in ambiguous facial expressions and affects neural correlates of face processing

Efthimiou,

Baker,

Clarke

et al. 2023

Preprint

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The recognition of emotional facial expressions is crucial for social communication, but different views exist on whether facial feedback is a significant factor in this decoding process. Previous studies have manipulated the degree of activation of facial muscles through various techniques, such as voluntary posing of facial expressions, holding a pen in the mouth, or botulinum toxin injections. These methods, however, are limited in their control over which muscles are (de)activated when and to what degree. To overcome these limitations, we used computer-controlled facial neuromuscular electrical stimulation (fNMES) to generate 500ms of weak contractions of bilateral Zygomaticus Major muscle (ZM) at the onset of faces shown on the screen. Ambiguous facial expressions were categorised as happy or sad by 47 participants. In half of the trials, weak smiling was induced through fNMES, as verified with automatic FACS coding. EEG was recorded throughout. The likelihood of categorising ambiguous facial expressions as happy was significantly increased with fNMES, as shown with frequentist and Bayesian linear mixed models. Further, fNMES resulted in a reduction of P1, N170 and LPP amplitudes. These findings suggest that fNMES-induced facial feedback can bias facial emotion recognition and modulate the neural correlates of face processing. We conclude that fNMES has potential as a tool for studying the effects of facial feedback.

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“…All emotion changes were based on the Facial Action Coding System (FACS; Ekman et al, 2002) by a certified FACS coder using FacsGen. For similar procedures, see Korb et al (2022).…”

Section: Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Remarkably, a higher RM for happy-to-ambiguous (compared to angry-toambiguous) faces was mainly found in male avatars, with female avatars instead leading to similar RM magnitudes in both emotion conditions. This effect of sex can reveal internalized cultural or social statistical regularities, with male conspecifics being perceived as either more aggressive or observers being more prone to further anticipate angry and threatening states in males (Harris et al, 2016;Korb et al, 2022;Korb & Massaccesi, 2020). For instance, a study using a set of static avatar faces, varying along the emotion dimension (angry-to-happy) and sex dimension (male-to-female), found that sex features influenced emotion categorization and rating predominantly when the emotional expression was ambiguous, with more masculine faces being judged as angrier ("maleness-anger" association) and faces with more female features being judged as happier ("femalenesshappiness" association) (Korb et al, 2022).…”

Section: Increased Anticipation Of Threatmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This effect of sex can reveal internalized cultural or social statistical regularities, with male conspecifics being perceived as either more aggressive or observers being more prone to further anticipate angry and threatening states in males (Harris et al, 2016;Korb et al, 2022;Korb & Massaccesi, 2020). For instance, a study using a set of static avatar faces, varying along the emotion dimension (angry-to-happy) and sex dimension (male-to-female), found that sex features influenced emotion categorization and rating predominantly when the emotional expression was ambiguous, with more masculine faces being judged as angrier ("maleness-anger" association) and faces with more female features being judged as happier ("femalenesshappiness" association) (Korb et al, 2022). Somehow contradictory, however, we demonstrated that the ambiguity threshold in both female and male avatars was displaced towards a slightly angrier expression, with no effect of Avatar Sex.…”

Section: Increased Anticipation Of Threatmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Emotional anticipation for dynamic emotional faces is not modulated by schizotypal traits: A Representational Momentum study

Grave¹,

Cordeiro²,

Teixeira³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Schizotypy is a personality structure that resembles positive, negative, and disorganized symptoms of schizophrenia, often associated with abnormal emotional face perception. Moreover, due to the predominant sense characterizing psychotic experiences, people with high schizotypal traits might be more prone to anticipate a potential threat based on the immediate perceptual history of others’ facial expressions. To test this hypothesis, angry-to-ambiguous and happy-to-ambiguous dynamic avatar faces were presented, each followed by a probe depicting the same expression as the final frame of the dynamic face (ambiguous) or one slightly changed to greater happiness/anger. Participants were asked to judge if the probe was equal to the final frame and to rate how confident they were. The direction of bias was calculated, with positive values indicating a Representational Momentum (RM) effect, a perceptual phenomenon in which the offset of a dynamic event is systematically displaced forward, into the immediate future. Firstly, happy-to-ambiguous faces significantly induced RM, suggesting an emotional anticipation for dynamic faces changing towards a potential threat. Secondly, this effect was higher for male than female faces, consistent with a maleness-anger association. Thirdly, and more importantly, our hypothesis of higher RM for happy-to-ambiguous faces in people with high (compared to low) schizotypal traits was not confirmed, as no effect of schizotypal traits was observed. This suggests a typical pattern of emotional anticipation for dynamic emotional faces in subclinical schizotypy. Future studies should investigate if the same holds for clinical manifestations of schizophrenia.

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EmoSex: Emotion prevails over sex in implicit judgments of faces and voices.

Cited by 10 publications

References 100 publications

The influence of affective voice on sound distance perception

The influence of affective voice on sound distance perception

Zygomaticus activation through facial neuromuscular electric stimulation (fNMES) induces happiness perception in ambiguous facial expressions and affects neural correlates of face processing

Emotional anticipation for dynamic emotional faces is not modulated by schizotypal traits: A Representational Momentum study

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