Gender Facial Expression Stereotypes For Adults Can Extend To Six Years Old Children

Facial expression plays an important role in the interpersonal communication of individuals.Correct cognition of facial expression helps individuals better adapt to the social environment.Some studies have found that gender facial expression stereotype will affect the recognition of individual facial expression.Research has found that women are more likely than men to experience and express awe,embarrassment,fear,distress,joy,guilt,sympathy,sadness,surprise,shame and shyness,while men are more likely than women to experience and express anger and pride.Previous studies mainly focused on western subjects to explore the stereotype of adults' facial expressions on adults,and some studies also took preschool children and school-age children as subjects to explore the development of gender facial expression stereotype of children.The purpose of this study is to further explore whether adults hold gender facial expression stereotypes in children of different ages on the basis of exploring whether there are gender facial expression stereotypes in adults' judgment of adult facial expression.Experiment 1a showed that when subjects were asked to imagine happy faces in adults,they were more likely to imagine women,while when they were asked to imagine angry faces,they were more likely to imagine men.Experiment 1b results showed that when the subjects were presented with angry and happy faces of adults and asked to judge the gender of the face,the interaction between facial expression and facial gender was significant,and the subjects could quickly and accurately identify the angry expression on the male face and the happy expression on the female face.On the basis of experiment 1,experiment 2 examined whether adults had gender facial expression stereotyping on children aged 10 years.Experiment 2a results show that when asked to imagine a happy face of a 10-year-old child,the subject did not report thinking more about female children,possibly because of the influence of traditional Chinese preference for boys.When asked to imagine angry faces,more of the children were male.When asked to imagine an angry face,what was more considered was the result of male child experiment 2b and experiment 1b,that is,the interaction between face gender and facial expression was significant.The subject could quickly and accurately identify the happy expression on the face of a10-year-old female child and the angry expression on the face of a 10-year-old male child.On the basis of experiment 2,experiment 3 used happy and angry faces of6-year-old children as experimental materials and college students as subjects to examine whether adults have gender facial expression stereotypes of 6-year-old children.Experiment 3a results showed that when the subjects were asked to imagine the happy faces of 6-year-old children,the subjects did not report thinking more about women,possibly because of the influence of traditional Chinese thought of son preference.When asked to imagine angry faces,more of the children were male.The results of experiment 3b were significantly correlated with experiment 1b,that is,the interaction between face gender and facial expression was significant.The subjects could quickly and accurately identify the happy expression on the face of 6-year-old female children and the angry expression on the face of 6-year-old male children.Although the interaction between face gender and facial expression was significant,a further simple analysis of the main effect found that there was no significant difference between the reaction time and error rate of the subjects in recognizing angry faces of men and angry faces of women.The above results show that in the context of Chinese culture,adults hold gender facial expression stereotypes against adults,and adults also hold gender facial expression stereotypes against children aged 10 and 6.