Gender, emotion, and channel in emotion processing (Lin et al., 2021)

Purpose: The nature of gender differences in emotion processing has remained unclear due to the discrepancies in existing literature. This study examined the modulatory effects of emotion categories and communication channels on gender differences in verbal and nonverbal emotion perception.Method: Eighty-eight participants (43 females and 45 males) were asked to identify three basic emotions (i.e., happiness, sadness, and anger) and neutrality encoded by female or male actors from verbal (i.e., semantic) or nonverbal (i.e., facial and prosodic) channels.Results: While women showed an overall advantage in performance, their superiority was dependent on specific types of emotion and channel. Specifically, women outperformed men in regard to two basic emotions (happiness and sadness) in the nonverbal channels and only the anger category with verbal content. Conversely, men did better for the anger category in the nonverbal channels and for the other two emotions (happiness and sadness) in verbal content. There was an emotion- and channel-specific interaction effect between the two types of gender differences, with male subjects showing higher sensitivity to sad faces and prosody portrayed by the female encoders.Conclusion: These findings reveal explicit emotion processing as a highly dynamic complex process with significant gender differences tied to specific emotion categories and communication channels.Supplemental Material S1. Selected words for the prosodic and semantic task and their familiarity level. Supplemental Material S2. Pairwise contrasts for significant interactions of Channel × Emotion × Decoders’ Gender (Model 13) and Channel × Emotion × Encoders’ Gender (Model 14) in accuracy. Supplemental Material S3. Pairwise contrasts for the significant interaction of Channel × Emotion × Decoders’ Gender × Encoders’ Gender (Model 15) in reaction time. Lin, Y., Ding, H., & Zhang, Y. (2021). Gender differences in identifying facial, prosodic, and semantic emotions show category- and channel-specific effects mediated by encoder’s gender. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_JSLHR-20-00553

目的：鉴于现有文献中存在的差异，性别在情绪处理上的差异性质一直不甚明了。本研究旨在探讨情绪类别和沟通渠道对言语及非言语情绪感知中性别差异的调节作用。方法：招募了88名参与者（其中女性43名，男性45名），要求他们识别由女性或男性演员编码的三种基本情绪（即快乐、悲伤和愤怒），这些情绪通过言语（即语义）或非言语（即面部和韵律）渠道传达。结果：尽管女性在整体表现上显示出优势，但这种优势依赖于特定的情绪类型和渠道。具体而言，女性在非言语渠道中针对两种基本情绪（快乐和悲伤）以及仅涉及愤怒类别的言语内容上优于男性。相反，男性在非言语渠道中的愤怒类别以及言语内容中的其他两种情绪（快乐和悲伤）上表现更佳。两种性别差异类型之间存在情绪和渠道特定的交互作用，男性受试者对女性编码者所描绘的悲伤面部表情和韵律的敏感性更高。结论：这些发现揭示了情绪处理作为一个高度动态且复杂的进程，其性别差异与特定情绪类别和沟通渠道密切相关。补充材料S1：韵律和语义任务中的选词及其熟悉度水平。补充材料S2：通道×情绪×解码者性别（模型13）和通道×情绪×编码者性别（模型14）在准确性方面显著交互作用的成对比较。补充材料S3：通道×情绪×解码者性别×编码者性别（模型15）在反应时间方面的显著交互作用的成对比较。Lin, Y., Ding, H., & Zhang, Y. (2021). 性别在识别面部、韵律和语义情绪方面的差异显示出类别和渠道特定的效应，该效应由编码者性别所中介。言语、语言和听力研究杂志。在线预发表。https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_JSLHR-20-00553