Sex Differences in the Recognition of Children’s Emotional Expressions: A Test of the Fitness Threat Hypothesis

Differences in the recognition of sadness, anger, and fear in facial expressions: the role of the observer and model gender

“…There were no gender differences in the recognition accuracy of anger and sadness. However, as far as recognition speed is concerned, our results support the fitness threat hypothesis that females have an advantage in recognising negative emotional expressions of fear and sadness as an evolutionary adaptation related to the greater investment of female ancestors in parental care and nurturing of offspring ( 6 , 11 ). This female advantage has also been found in the speed of recognising anger, which contradicts the fitness threat hypothesis but is consistent with the attachment promotion hypothesis, which postulates that females have an advantage in recognising all emotions from facial expressions.…”

“…According to this hypothesis, females should outperform males in decoding both positive and negative emotions from facial expressions (6). Many studies have confirmed this assumption (4,(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11). The second, fitness threat hypothesis, which was derived from the 1985 primary caretaker hypothesis of Babchuk et al (12), suggests that females should outperform males in recognising negative emotions, as they have predominantly been responsible for child care throughout hominid evolution and evolved specific adaptations that increase the likelihood of survival of their offspring.…”

Crying the blues: The configural processing of infant face emotions and its association with postural biases

“…Moreover, as regards the recognition of emotions from infant faces, better performances were found for sadness rather than happiness, regardless of participants’ sex. This result partially corroborates the “fitness threat hypothesis” according to which negative emotions expressed by infants represent a biologically salient stimulus for women (Hampson et al, 2021 ). However, we found this effect also in men and this can be due to the fact that infant sadness might represent a cue of the infant’s distress, the quick and accurate response to which—compared with happiness—could be crucial for the survival of the individuals, regardless of sex.…”

“…For instance, a recent study using the inversion effect paradigm has shown that higher maternal sensitivity was associated with a larger use of configural processing for their infants’ body cues (Butti et al, 2018 ). Although recent research seems to suggest that a common expression-specific emotion recognition mechanism might exist for the processing of both infant and adult specific emotions from faces (Parsons et al, 2011 ), a general advantage for the processing of infant faces expressing negative emotions has been very recently demonstrated, further confirming the biological salience of this specific valence (Hampson et al, 2021 ).…”

“…In sum, the aim of this study was to investigate, in a sample of female and male adults, the existence of potential biases in processing adult and infant faces using an emotion recognition task (i.e., detecting happy vs. sad expressions), also according to the angle of rotation at which they were presented. In particular, we hypothesized a general advantage in recognizing the emotional expression of adult rather than infant faces due to the own-age bias described in the literature of face recognition (Rhodes & Anastasi, 2012 ; H1), and a female advantage (in terms of better performance) in recognizing the emotional expression of both adult and infant faces, more evident for sad rather than happy faces of infants (Hampson et al, 2021 ; H2). Moreover, we hypothesized a stronger inversion effect for sad than happy adult faces (Calvo & Nummenmaa, 2008 ; H3), and an inversion effect for both sad and happy infant faces (H4).…”