The social face of emotion recognition: Evaluations versus stereotypes

Abstract

The goal of the present paper was to demonstrate the influence of general evaluations and stereotype associations on emotion recognition. Earlier research has shown that evaluative connotations between social category members and emotional expression predict whether recognition of positive or negative emotional expressions will be facilitated (e.g. Hugenberg, 2005). In the current paper we tested the hypothesis that stereotype associations influence emotion recognition processes, especially when the difference between valences of emotional expressions does not come into play. In line with this notion, when participants in the present two studies were asked to classify positive versus negative emotional expressions (i.e. happy versus anger, or happy versus sadness), valence congruency effects were found. Importantly, however, in a comparative context without differences in valence in which participants were asked to classify two distinct negative emotions (i.e. anger versus sadness) we found that recognition facilitation occurred for stereotypically associated discrete emotional expressions. With this, the current results indicate that a distinction between general evaluative and cognitive routes can be made in emotion recognition processes.

Introduction

Fast and correct recognition of emotional expressions is a prerequisite for fluent social interaction. A face carries a wealth of informative cues and can say more than a thousand words. Apart from unchangeable features in the face that carry information regarding identity or social category (e.g. sex or ethnicity), changeable features reveal how someone is feeling at that specific moment (e.g. happy, angry or sad). Previous research has shown that unchangeable features can influence the interpretation of changeable facial features in emotional recognition. More specifically, this research focused on the interplay between social categorization and recognition of emotional expressions (e.g. Becker et al., 2007, Elfenbein and Ambady, 2002, Hugenberg, 2005, Hugenberg and Bodenhausen, 2003, Hutchings and Haddock, 2008).

How do social categorization processes influence emotion recognition? One route that has been recently explored is that evaluative category associations facilitate or inhibit the recognition of evaluative congruent emotions. For example, Hugenberg (2005) demonstrated, in line with an evaluative processes account, that white American participants show a recognition speed advantage when judging whether a white target’s face displays a positive (happy) facial expression compared to negative (angry or sad) facial expressions. This phenomenon is called the happy face advantage (Leppänen & Hietanen, 2003). This effect was found by Hugenberg to be reversed when the expresser of the emotion was black, with white participants showing a recognition advantage for both negative emotions (angry and sad) compared to the positive emotion. In a similar vein, Hugenberg and Sczesny (2006) found evidence for differences in emotion recognition depending on gender: for female target faces a greater happy face advantage was found than for male target faces. The authors conclude that these effects are best explained by the spreading of evaluative associations: the valence of the target face, as triggered by the category, serves as a prime for recognizing emotional expressions independently of the discrete emotion being expressed.

However, a vast amount of research revealed evidence that social categories not only trigger evaluative associations, but also stereotype associations (e.g. Devine, 1989). The latter contain specific traits and cognitions that are linked to the social category. An increasing body of evidence emphasizes the importance of differentiating between evaluative and stereotype associations. For example, Amodio and Devine (2006) recently demonstrated that evaluative and cognitive processes differentially influence behavioral responses. Moreover, they argue that different neurological mechanisms underlie these effects. However, in emotion recognition literature such a distinction between processes has yet to be made.

We argue that also stereotype associations influence the ease of emotion recognition. Specifically, discrete emotions such as anger and sadness differ from each other despite both having a negative valence. Similarly to traits, some discrete emotional expressions are more stereotypical for some social categories than for others, independent of their general valence. For instance, anger is more strongly associated with men than women, while sadness is more strongly associated with women than men (Fischer et al., 2004, Plant et al., 2000). Although both emotions have a negative valence, they are associated with different social categories. In this sense, emotions do not differ from other stimuli or characteristics that may have a better normative fit with one social category than the other (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987). Importantly, these stereotype associations may facilitate or inhibit the recognition of emotional expressions (e.g. sadness is recognized faster on female faces than on male faces). In this way, stereotypical views may confirm themselves in biased emotion recognition.

Interestingly, the findings of Hugenberg, 2005, Hugenberg and Sczesny, 2006 did not reveal any evidence of stereotype effects on emotion recognition. No categorical differences in the processing of discrete negative emotions between social categories were found. Therefore, their findings suggest that social category information influences emotion recognition by means of general evaluative connotations with the category, rather than by specific associations between the category (e.g. black targets) and discrete emotional expressions (e.g. anger). In our view, however, these null findings for stereotype associations could be due to the research method that was employed in these earlier studies. In prior work, participants categorized both positive and negative emotional expressions on faces of two distinct social categories within one task (e.g. Hugenberg, 2005, Hugenberg and Sczesny, 2006). As a result, differences in valence were highly salient within the task and participant performance was influenced by general affective reactions towards the social categories under investigation. Consequently, recognition effects concerning discrete emotional expressions may have been overshadowed by general evaluative effects.

The goal of the present two studies was to demonstrate the influence of not only valence but also of stereotype associations on emotion recognition. In order to do this, comparative context was taken into account. On the one hand, the experimental design employed ‘dual-valence comparative context conditions’ which contained a positive versus a discrete negative emotional expression. On the other hand, we used a ‘single-valence comparative context condition’ in which two distinct negative emotional expressions were compared. In the dual-valence comparative context, participants categorized happy versus angry, or happy versus sad expressions, whereas in the single-valence comparative context, anger versus sadness were categorized. In the remainder of this article we will refer to these comparative context conditions as single- or dual-valence conditions.

When people are asked to classify two distinctive negative emotional expressions, the influence of valence on emotion recognition advantages is thought to be decreased. If category information influences emotion recognition only by means of valence, both negative emotions should be recognized faster when expressed by a member of a relatively negatively associated social category compared to members of a more positively evaluated social category. However, if specific stereotype associations (or cognitive instead of affective processes) influence emotion recognition speed, especially the discrete negative emotional expression most strongly associated with the social category should be recognized faster compared to less strong or unassociated negative emotional expressions. We therefore expected associated category-valence to influence emotion recognition speed in the dual-valence conditions, while stereotype associations were expected to facilitate emotion recognition processes in the single-valence condition. The social categories employed were White Dutch and Moroccan Dutch men (Study 1) and men versus women (Study 2).