Title |
Gender Affects Body Language Reading
|
---|---|
Published in |
Frontiers in Psychology, January 2011
|
DOI | 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00016 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Arseny A. Sokolov, Samuel Krüger, Paul Enck, Ingeborg Krägeloh-Mann, Marina A. Pavlova |
Abstract |
Body motion is a rich source of information for social cognition. However, gender effects in body language reading are largely unknown. Here we investigated whether, and, if so, how recognition of emotional expressions revealed by body motion is gender dependent. To this end, females and males were presented with point-light displays portraying knocking at a door performed with different emotional expressions. The findings show that gender affects accuracy rather than speed of body language reading. This effect, however, is modulated by emotional content of actions: males surpass in recognition accuracy of happy actions, whereas females tend to excel in recognition of hostile angry knocking. Advantage of women in recognition accuracy of neutral actions suggests that females are better tuned to the lack of emotional content in body actions. The study provides novel insights into understanding of gender effects in body language reading, and helps to shed light on gender vulnerability to neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental impairments in visual social cognition. |
X Demographics
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
United States | 5 | 56% |
Unknown | 4 | 44% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Members of the public | 9 | 100% |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Germany | 3 | 2% |
Hungary | 1 | <1% |
Turkey | 1 | <1% |
Indonesia | 1 | <1% |
France | 1 | <1% |
Hong Kong | 1 | <1% |
Canada | 1 | <1% |
Unknown | 115 | 93% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Student > Bachelor | 24 | 19% |
Student > Ph. D. Student | 15 | 12% |
Student > Master | 14 | 11% |
Researcher | 12 | 10% |
Student > Postgraduate | 9 | 7% |
Other | 31 | 25% |
Unknown | 19 | 15% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Psychology | 36 | 29% |
Social Sciences | 11 | 9% |
Medicine and Dentistry | 10 | 8% |
Arts and Humanities | 8 | 6% |
Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 6 | 5% |
Other | 29 | 23% |
Unknown | 24 | 19% |