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Happiness/Anger Superiority Effect

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Date Issued:
2013
Summary:
Two experiments were conducted to investigate the impact of poser and perceiver gender on the Happiness/Anger Superiority effect and the Female Advantage in facial expression recognition. Happy, neutral, and angry facial expressions were presented on male and female faces under Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS). Participants of both genders indicated when the presented faces broke through the suppression. In the second experiment, angry and happy expressions were reduced to 50% intensity. At full intensity, there was no difference in the reaction time for female neutral and angry faces, but male faces showed a difference in detection between all expressions. Across experiments, male faces were detected later than female faces for all facial expressions. Happiness was generally detected faster than anger, except when on female faces at 50% intensity. No main effect for perceiver gender emerged. It was concluded that happiness is superior to anger in CFS, and that poser gender affects facial expression recognition.
Title: The Happiness/Anger Superiority Effect: the influence of the gender of perceiver and poser in facial expression recognition.
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Name(s): Peaco, Sophia.
Charles E. Schmidt College of Science
Department of Psychology
Type of Resource: text
Genre: Electronic Thesis Or Dissertation
Date Issued: 2013
Publisher: Florida Atlantic University
Physical Form: electronic
Extent: vi, 31 p. : ill.
Language(s): English
Summary: Two experiments were conducted to investigate the impact of poser and perceiver gender on the Happiness/Anger Superiority effect and the Female Advantage in facial expression recognition. Happy, neutral, and angry facial expressions were presented on male and female faces under Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS). Participants of both genders indicated when the presented faces broke through the suppression. In the second experiment, angry and happy expressions were reduced to 50% intensity. At full intensity, there was no difference in the reaction time for female neutral and angry faces, but male faces showed a difference in detection between all expressions. Across experiments, male faces were detected later than female faces for all facial expressions. Happiness was generally detected faster than anger, except when on female faces at 50% intensity. No main effect for perceiver gender emerged. It was concluded that happiness is superior to anger in CFS, and that poser gender affects facial expression recognition.
Identifier: 852253770 (oclc), 3360964 (digitool), FADT3360964 (IID), fau:4128 (fedora)
Note(s): by Sophia Peaco.
Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013.
Includes bibliography.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
System requirements: Adobe Reader.
Subject(s): Face perception
Human face recognition
Facial expression -- Physiological aspects
Biometric identification
Recollection (Psychology)
Recognition (Psychology)
Persistent Link to This Record: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/3360964
Use and Reproduction: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Host Institution: FAU