Emotional stereotypes on trial: Implicit emotion associations for young and old adults.

Individuals use naïve emotion theories, including stereotypical information on the emotional disposition of an interaction partner, to form social impressions. In view of an aging population in Western societies, beliefs on emotion and age become more and more relevant. Across 10 studies, we thus present findings on how individuals associate specific affective states with young and old adults using the emotion implicit association test. The results of the studies are summarized in 2 separate mini meta-analyses. Participants implicitly associated young adult individuals with positive emotions, that is, happiness and serenity, respectively, and old adult individuals with negative emotions, that is, sadness and anger, respectively (Mini Meta-Analysis 1). Within negative emotions, participants preferentially associated young adult individuals with sadness and old adult individuals with anger (Mini Meta-Analysis 2). Even though young and old adults are stereotypically associated with specific emotions, contextual factors influence which age-emotion stereotype is salient in a given context. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Age and Gender Differences in Facial Attractiveness, but Not Emotion Resemblance, Contribute to Age and Gender Stereotypes.

Considerable research has shown effects of facial appearance on trait impressions and group stereotypes. We extended those findings in two studies that investigated the contribution of resemblance to emotion expressions and attractiveness to younger adults (YA) and older adults (OA) age and gender stereotypes on the dimensions of warmth and competence. Using connectionist modeling of facial metrics of 240 neutral younger and older faces, Study 1 found that, neutral expression older faces or female faces showed greater structural resemblance to happy expressions and less resemblance to angry expressions than did younger or male faces, respectively. In addition, neutral female faces showed greater resemblance to surprise expressions. In Study 2, YA and OA rated the faces of Study 1 for attractiveness and for 4 traits that we aggregated on the dimensions of competence (competent, healthy) and warmth (trustworthy, not shrewd). We found that YA, but not OA, age stereotypes replicated previous research showing higher perceived warmth and lower perceived competence in older adults. In addition, previously documented gender stereotypes were moderated by face age for both YA and OA. The greater attractiveness of younger than older faces and female than male faces influenced age and gender stereotypes, including these deviations from prior research findings using category labels rather than faces. On the other hand, face age and face sex differences in emotion resemblance did not influence age or gender stereotypes, contrary to prediction. Our results provide a caveat to conclusions about age and gender stereotypes derived from responses to category labels, and they reveal the importance of assessing stereotypes with a methodology that is sensitive to influences of group differences in appearance that can exacerbate or mitigate stereotypes in more ecologically valid contexts. Although the gender differences in attractiveness in the present study may not have generalizability, the age differences likely do, and the fact that they can weaken the attribution of greater warmth and strengthen the attribution of lower competence to older than younger individuals has important practical implications.

What Facial Appearance Reveals Over Time: When Perceived Expressions in Neutral Faces Reveal Stable Emotion Dispositions.

It might seem a reasonable assumption that when we are not actively using our faces to express ourselves (i.e., when we display nonexpressive, or neutral faces), those around us will not be able to read our emotions. Herein, using a variety of expression-related ratings, we examined whether age-related changes in the face can accurately reveal one's innermost affective dispositions. In each study, we found that expressive ratings of neutral facial displays predicted self-reported positive/negative dispositional affect, but only for elderly women, and only for positive affect. These findings meaningfully replicate and extend earlier work examining age-related emotion cues in the face of elderly women (Malatesta et al., 1987a). We discuss these findings in light of evidence that women are expected to, and do, smile more than men, and that the quality of their smiles predicts their life satisfaction. Although ratings of old male faces did not significantly predict self-reported affective dispositions, the trend was similar to that found for old female faces. A plausible explanation for this gender difference is that in the process of attenuating emotional expressions over their lifetimes, old men reveal less evidence of their total emotional experiences in their faces than do old women.

Through a glass darkly: facial wrinkles affect our processing of emotion in the elderly.

The correct interpretation of emotional expressions is crucial for social life. However, emotions in old relative to young faces are recognized less well. One reason for this may be decreased signal clarity of older faces due to morphological changes, such as wrinkles and folds, obscuring facial displays of emotions. Across three experiments, the present research investigates how misattributions of emotions to elderly faces impair emotion discrimination. In a preliminary task, neutral expressions were perceived as more expressive in old than in young faces by human raters (Experiment 1A) and an automatic system for emotion recognition (Experiment 1B). Consequently, task difficulty was higher for old faces relative to young faces in a visual search task (Experiment 2). Specifically, participants detected old faces expressing negative emotions less accurately and slower among neutral faces of their peers than young faces among neutral faces of their peers. Thus, we argue that age-related changes in facial features are the most plausible explanation for the differences in emotion perception between young and old faces. These findings are of relevance for the social interchange with the elderly, especially when multiple older individuals are present.

Smiling and sad wrinkles: Age-related changes in the face and the perception of emotions and intentions.

There is a common belief that wrinkles in the aging face reflect frequently experienced emotions and hence resemble these affective displays. This implies that the wrinkles and folds in elderly faces interfere with the perception of other emotions currently experienced by the elderly as well as with the inferences perceivers draw from these expressions. Whereas there is ample research on the impact of aging on emotion recognition, almost no research has focused on how emotions expressed by the elderly are perceived by others. The present research addresses this latter question. Young participants rated the emotion expressions and behavioral intentions of old and young faces displaying identical expressions. The findings suggest that emotions shown on older faces have reduced signal clarity and may consequently have less impact on inferences regarding behavioral intentions. Both effects can be expected to have negative consequences for rapport achieved in everyday interactions involving the elderly.

Emotion in the neutral face: a mechanism for impression formation?

The current work examined contributions of emotion-resembling facial cues to impression formation. There exist common facial cues that make people look emotional, male or female, and from which we derive personality inferences. We first conducted a Pilot Study to assess these effects. We found that neutral female versus neutral male faces were rated as more submissive, affiliative, naïve, honest, cooperative, babyish, fearful, happy, and less angry than neutral male faces. In our Primary Study, we then "warped" these same neutral faces over their corresponding anger and fear displays so the resultant facial appearance cues now structurally resembled emotion while retaining a neutral visage (e.g., no wrinkles, furrows, creases, etc.). The gender effects found in the Pilot Study were replicated in the Primary Study, suggesting clear stereotype-driven impressions. Critically, ratings of the neutral-over-fear warps versus neutral-over-anger warps also revealed a profile similar to the gender-based ratings, revealing perceptually driven impressions directly attributable to emotion overgeneralisation.

Amygdala responses to averted vs direct gaze fear vary as a function of presentation speed.

We examined whether amygdala responses to rapidly presented fear expressions are preferentially tuned to averted vs direct gaze fear and conversely whether responses to more sustained presentations are preferentially tuned to direct vs averted gaze fear. We conducted three functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies to test these predictions including: Study 1: a block design employing sustained presentations (1 s) of averted vs direct gaze fear expressions taken from the Pictures of Facial Affect; Study 2: a block design employing rapid presentations (300 ms) of these same stimuli and Study 3: a direct replication of these studies in the context of a single experiment using stimuli selected from the NimStim Emotional Face Stimuli. Together, these studies provide evidence consistent with an early, reflexive amygdala response tuned to clear threat and a later reflective response tuned to ambiguous threat.

Differentially tuned responses to restricted versus prolonged awareness of threat: a preliminary fMRI investigation.

Responses to threat occur via two known independent processing routes. We propose that early, reflexive processing is predominantly tuned to the detection of congruent combinations of facial cues that signal threat, whereas later, reflective processing is predominantly tuned to incongruent combinations of threat. To test this prediction, we examined responses to threat-gaze expression pairs (anger versus fear expression by direct versus averted gaze). We report on two functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, one employing prolonged presentations (2s) of threat-gaze pairs to allow for reflective processing (Study 1), and one employing severely restricted (33 ms), backward masked presentations of threat-gaze pairs to isolate reflexive neural responding (Study 2). Our findings offer initial support for the conclusion that early, reflexive responses to threat are predominantly tuned to congruent threat-gaze pairings, whereas later reflective responses are predominantly tuned to ambiguous threat-gaze pairings. These findings highlight a distinct dual function in threat perception.

The face is not an empty canvas: how facial expressions interact with facial appearance.

Faces are not simply blank canvases upon which facial expressions write their emotional messages. In fact, facial appearance and facial movement are both important social signalling systems in their own right. We here provide multiple lines of evidence for the notion that the social signals derived from facial appearance on the one hand and facial movement on the other interact in a complex manner, sometimes reinforcing and sometimes contradicting one another. Faces provide information on who a person is. Sex, age, ethnicity, personality and other characteristics that can define a person and the social group the person belongs to can all be derived from the face alone. The present article argues that faces interact with the perception of emotion expressions because this information informs a decoder's expectations regarding an expresser's probable emotional reactions. Facial appearance also interacts more directly with the interpretation of facial movement because some of the features that are used to derive personality or sex information are also features that closely resemble certain emotional expressions, thereby enhancing or diluting the perceived strength of particular expressions.

Face gender and emotion expression: are angry women more like men?

Certain features of facial appearance perceptually resemble expressive cues related to facial displays of emotion. We hypothesized that because expressive markers of anger (such as lowered eyebrows) overlap with perceptual markers of male sex, perceivers would identify androgynous angry faces as more likely to be a man than a woman (Study 1) and would be slower to classify an angry woman as a woman than an angry man as a man (Study 2). Conversely, we hypothesized that because perceptual features of fear (raised eyebrows) and happiness (a rounded smiling face) overlap with female sex markers, perceivers would be more likely to identify an androgynous face showing these emotions as a woman than as a man (Study 1) and would be slower to identify happy and fearful men as men than happy and fearful women as women (Study 2). The results of the two studies showed that happiness and fear expressions bias sex discrimination toward the female, whereas anger expressions bias sex perception toward the male.

Postauricular and eyeblink startle responses to facial expressions.

Emotional facial expressions have affective significance. Smiles, for example, are perceived as positive and responded to with increased happiness, whereas angry expressions are perceived as negative and threatening. Yet, these perceptions are modulated in part by facial morphological cues related to the sex of the expresser. The present research assessed both eyeblink startle and the postauricular reflex during happy and angry expressions by men and women. For this 14 male and 16 female undergraduates saw happy, neutral, and angry facial expressions as well as positive and negative pictures. The postauricular reflex was potentiated during happy expressions and inhibited during anger expressions; however, as expected, this pattern was more clearly found for female expressers. Conversely, the expected pattern of eyeblink startle potentiation during angry faces and inhibition during happy faces was found only for male expressers.

Effects of direct and averted gaze on the perception of facially communicated emotion.

Research has largely neglected the effects of gaze direction cues on the perception of facial expressions of emotion. It was hypothesized that when gaze direction matches the underlying behavioral intent (approach-avoidance) communicated by an emotional expression, the perception of that emotion would be enhanced (i.e., shared signal hypothesis). Specifically, the authors expected that (a) direct gaze would enhance the perception of approach-oriented emotions (anger and joy) and (b) averted eye gaze would enhance the perception of avoidance-oriented emotions (fear and sadness). Three studies supported this hypothesis. Study 1 examined emotional trait attributions made to neutral faces. Study 2 examined ratings of ambiguous facial blends of anger and fear. Study 3 examined the influence of gaze on the perception of highly prototypical expressions.

The effects of fear and anger facial expressions on approach- and avoidance-related behaviors.

The facial expressions of fear and anger are universal social signals in humans. Both expressions have been frequently presumed to signify threat to perceivers and therefore are often used in studies investigating responses to threatening stimuli. Here the authors show that the anger expression facilitates avoidance-related behavior in participants, which supports the notion of this expression being a threatening stimulus. The fear expression, on the other hand, facilitates approach behaviors in perceivers. This contradicts the notion of the fear expression as predominantly threatening or aversive and suggests it may represent an affiliative stimulus. Although the fear expression may signal that a threat is present in the environment, the effect of the expression on conspecifics may be in part to elicit approach.

Why do fear and anger look the way they do? Form and social function in facial expressions.

The origins of the appearances of anger and fear facial expressions are not well understood. The authors tested the hypothesis that such origins might lie in the expressions' resemblance to, respectively, mature and babyish faces in three studies. In Study 1, faces expressing anger and fear were judged to physically resemble mature and babyish faces. Study 2 indicated that characteristics associated specifically with babyishness are attributed to persons showing fear, whereas characteristics associated with maturity are attributed to persons showing anger. In Study 3, composite faces were used to minimize the possibility that the attributions were based on associations to the anger and fear emotions alone rather than to the physical resemblance of the expressions to static facial appearance cues. These results suggest that fear and anger expressions may serve socially adaptive purposes for those who show them, similar to the social adaptations associated with a babyish or mature facial appearance.

Facial appearance, gender, and emotion expression.

Western gender stereotypes describe women as affiliative and more likely to show happiness and men as dominant and more likely to show anger. The authors assessed the hypothesis that the gender-stereotypic effects on perceptions of anger and happiness are partially mediated by facial appearance markers of dominance and affiliation by equating men's and women's faces for these cues. In 2 studies, women were rated as more angry and men as more happy-a reversal of the stereotype. Ratings of sadness, however, were not systematically affected. It is posited that markers of affiliation and dominance, themselves confounded with gender, interact with the expressive cues for anger and happiness to produce emotional perceptions that have been viewed as simple gender stereotypes.

Perceived gaze direction and the processing of facial displays of emotion.

There is good reason to believe that gaze direction and facial displays of emotion share an information value as signals of approach or avoidance. The combination of these cues in the analysis of social communication, however, has been a virtually neglected area of inquiry. Two studies were conducted to test the prediction that direct gaze would facilitate the processing of facially communicated approach-oriented emotions (e.g., anger and joy), whereas averted gaze would facilitate the processing of facially communicated avoidance-oriented emotions (e.g., fear and sadness). The results of both studies confirmed the central hypothesis and suggest that gaze direction and facial expression are combined in the processing of emotionally relevant facial information.