Awareness is determined by emotion and gender
Ema Jugović, Marta Poyo Solanas, Beatrice De Gelder
bioRxiv Preprint Server February 27, 2024 preprint DOI: 10.1101/2024.02.27.579317 via bioRxiv
Summary
Threatening body expressions are more easily detected than fearful ones, especially by male participants viewing male stimuli. Awareness of emotional body images depends on the specific emotion expressed, the gender of the person in the image, and the gender of the viewer. Minimal awareness may be linked to emotion-specific features of body images. These findings highlight the role of affective factors in consciousness and the importance of gender differences in emotional processing.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Experimental study |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 45 |
| Population | Human participants |
| Citations | 2 |
| Key finding | Threatening expressions are more easily detected than fearful ones, especially by males presented with male stimuli. |
Abstract
Traditionally, consciousness studies focus on domain general cognitive processes rather than on specific information reaching subjective awareness. The present study (N = 45) used visual masking and whole-body images to investigate whether the specific emotional expression as well as gender of the stimuli and of the participants impact awareness. Our results show that participants’ awareness responses reflect differences in the specific emotion of the stimuli, that these differences are a function of the gender of the stimuli as well as the gender of the participants and that minimal awareness may be associated with emotion specific features of the body images. Overall, we observed that threatening expressions are more easily detected than fearful ones, especially by males presented with male stimuli. Our findings underscore the importance of affective factors for theories of consciousness and underscore the significance of gender differences in emotional processing, often overlooked in past face and body emotion recognition studies.