The role of context in the recognition of facial expressions of negative emotions in relation to gender

In the current study we investigated whether men and women differ in the extent to which the context influences their recognition of ambiguous facial expressions of negative emotions. To answer this question, we asked participants to judge several ambiguous emotional expressions that were juxtaposed with prototypical or neutral emotional expressions. We expected that when decoding ambiguous expressions women would be more susceptible to the influence of context than men. 160 students or university graduates - including 80 women and 80 men -participated in the study. The results indicated that the influence of context of prototypical facial expressions on the recognition of ambiguous facial expressions of negative emotions could be modified by gender. Men were found to be affected by contrast effect when rating the degree of sadness, whereas for women no such difference was observed. peerReviewed publishedVersion