He throws like a girl (but only when he’s sad): Emotion affects sex-decoding of biological motion displays

• Published in: Cognition Vol. 119; no. 2; pp. 265 - 280
• Main Authors: Johnson, Kerri L., McKay, Lawrie S., Pollick, Frank E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.05.2011; Elsevier
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Biological motion; Biology; Biomechanical Phenomena; Cues; Emotion perception; Emotional Response; Emotions; Emotions - physiology; Face; Facial Expression; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Gender; Gender Identity; Gender Issues; Gender stereotypes; Humans; Judgement; Male; Motion; Movement - physiology; Nonverbal Communication; Photic Stimulation; Point-light display; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Psychomotor Performance - physiology; Sex Characteristics; Sex perception; Sex Stereotypes; Sexuality; Social attribution, perception and cognition; Social Perception; Social Psychology; Stereotypes; Stereotyping; Visual perception; Visual Stimuli; Young Adult; Biological motion; Gender stereotypes; Point-light display; Emotion perception; Sex perception; Human; Affect affectivity; Social perception; Sex; Stereotype; Emotion emotionality; Decoding; Experimental study; Vision; Body movement; Motricity
• ISSN: 0010-0277; 1873-7838
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2011.01.016

Gender stereotypes have been implicated in sex-typed perceptions of facial emotion. Such interpretations were recently called into question because facial cues of emotion are confounded with sexually dimorphic facial cues. Here we examine the role of visual cues and gender stereotypes in perceptions of biological motion displays, thus overcoming the morphological confounding inherent in facial displays. In four studies, participants’ judgments revealed gender stereotyping. Observers accurately perceived emotion from biological motion displays (Study 1), and this affected sex categorizations. Angry displays were overwhelmingly judged to be men; sad displays were judged to be women (Studies 2–4). Moreover, this pattern remained strong when stimuli were equated for velocity (Study 3). We argue that these results were obtained because perceivers applied gender stereotypes of emotion to infer sex category (Study 4). Implications for both vision sciences and social psychology are discussed.