Angry facial expressions bias gender categorization in children and adults: behavioral and computational evidence.

ABSTRACT: Angry faces are perceived as more masculine by adults. However, the developmental course and underlying mechanism (bottom-up stimulus driven or top-down belief driven) associated with the angry-male bias remain unclear. Here we report that anger biases face gender categorization toward "male" responding in children as young as 5-6 years. The bias is observed for both own- and other-race faces, and is remarkably unchanged across development (into adulthood) as revealed by signal detection analyses (Experiments 1-2). The developmental course of the angry-male bias, along with its extension to other-race faces, combine to suggest that it is not rooted in extensive experience, e.g., observing males engaging in aggressive acts during the school years. Based on several computational simulations

SUBMITTER: Bayet L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4374394 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature