Perceptual Skill in Decoding Facial Affect

Abstract

The perceptual skill in identifying the briefly exposed photographs of facial affect was examined with 75 men and 75 women who were asked to judge six cross-culturally recognizable slides, each expressing one of the six emotions exposed at three different time intervals. Each subject was required to give six judgments and the number of correct responses was considered his score. Analysis by a 3 × 2 factorial design indicated the longer the exposure of the photograph the better the recognition. Although there was no over-all sex difference, analysis by emotions confirmed significantly better accuracy by the women judging ‘sadness’ than by men, and men were more accurate for ‘anger’ than were women.