title: 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 of gender categorization (Experiment 3), we further conclude that (1) the angry-male bias results, at least partially, from a strategy of attending to facial features or their second-order relations when categorizing face gender, and (2) any single choice of computational representation (e.g., Principal Component Analysis) is insufficient to assess resemblances between face categories, as different representations of the very same faces suggest different bases for the angry-male bias. Our findings are thus consistent with stimulus-and stereotyped-belief driven accounts of the angry-male bias. Taken together, the evidence suggests considerable stability in the interaction between some facial dimensions in social categorization that is present prior to the onset of formal schooling.
authors: Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurocognition, University of Grenoble-Alps Grenoble, France ; Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurocognition, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Grenoble, France.
authors: Laurie
authors: L
authors: Bayet
authors: Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurocognition, University of Grenoble-Alps Grenoble, France ; Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurocognition, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Grenoble, France.
authors: Olivier
authors: O
authors: Pascalis
authors: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Delaware Newark, DE, USA.
authors: Paul C
authors: PC
authors: Quinn
authors: Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study, University of Toronto Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors: Kang
authors: K
authors: Lee
authors: Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurocognition, University of Grenoble-Alps Grenoble, France ; Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurocognition, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Grenoble, France ; Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva Geneva, Switzerland.
authors: Édouard
authors: É
authors: Gentaz
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Victoria Victoria, BC, Canada.
authors: James W
authors: JW
authors: Tanaka
keywords: children; emotion; face; gender; representation; stereotype