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Gender Affects Body Language Reading

Body motion is a rich source of information for social cognition. However, gender effects in body language reading are largely unknown. Here we investigated whether, and, if so, how recognition of emotional expressions revealed by body motion is gender dependent. To this end, females and males were...

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Autores principales: Sokolov, Arseny A., Krüger, Samuel, Enck, Paul, Krägeloh-Mann, Ingeborg, Pavlova, Marina A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Research Foundation 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3111255/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21713180
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00016
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author Sokolov, Arseny A.
Krüger, Samuel
Enck, Paul
Krägeloh-Mann, Ingeborg
Pavlova, Marina A.
author_facet Sokolov, Arseny A.
Krüger, Samuel
Enck, Paul
Krägeloh-Mann, Ingeborg
Pavlova, Marina A.
author_sort Sokolov, Arseny A.
collection PubMed
description Body motion is a rich source of information for social cognition. However, gender effects in body language reading are largely unknown. Here we investigated whether, and, if so, how recognition of emotional expressions revealed by body motion is gender dependent. To this end, females and males were presented with point-light displays portraying knocking at a door performed with different emotional expressions. The findings show that gender affects accuracy rather than speed of body language reading. This effect, however, is modulated by emotional content of actions: males surpass in recognition accuracy of happy actions, whereas females tend to excel in recognition of hostile angry knocking. Advantage of women in recognition accuracy of neutral actions suggests that females are better tuned to the lack of emotional content in body actions. The study provides novel insights into understanding of gender effects in body language reading, and helps to shed light on gender vulnerability to neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental impairments in visual social cognition.
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spelling pubmed-31112552011-06-27 Gender Affects Body Language Reading Sokolov, Arseny A. Krüger, Samuel Enck, Paul Krägeloh-Mann, Ingeborg Pavlova, Marina A. Front Psychol Psychology Body motion is a rich source of information for social cognition. However, gender effects in body language reading are largely unknown. Here we investigated whether, and, if so, how recognition of emotional expressions revealed by body motion is gender dependent. To this end, females and males were presented with point-light displays portraying knocking at a door performed with different emotional expressions. The findings show that gender affects accuracy rather than speed of body language reading. This effect, however, is modulated by emotional content of actions: males surpass in recognition accuracy of happy actions, whereas females tend to excel in recognition of hostile angry knocking. Advantage of women in recognition accuracy of neutral actions suggests that females are better tuned to the lack of emotional content in body actions. The study provides novel insights into understanding of gender effects in body language reading, and helps to shed light on gender vulnerability to neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental impairments in visual social cognition. Frontiers Research Foundation 2011-02-02 /pmc/articles/PMC3111255/ /pubmed/21713180 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00016 Text en Copyright © 2011 Sokolov, Krüger, Enck, Krägeloh-Mann and Pavlova. http://www.frontiersin.org/licenseagreement This is an open-access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and Frontiers Media SA, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.
spellingShingle Psychology
Sokolov, Arseny A.
Krüger, Samuel
Enck, Paul
Krägeloh-Mann, Ingeborg
Pavlova, Marina A.
Gender Affects Body Language Reading
title Gender Affects Body Language Reading
title_full Gender Affects Body Language Reading
title_fullStr Gender Affects Body Language Reading
title_full_unstemmed Gender Affects Body Language Reading
title_short Gender Affects Body Language Reading
title_sort gender affects body language reading
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3111255/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21713180
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00016
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