Abstract
Females show a small processing advantage relative to males in the ability to identify facial expressions of emotion. In laboratory studies, this is expressed as a sex difference in the accuracy of discrimination or in recognition latencies (the time required to identify an expression). Reasons for the sex difference are not well-understood. In the current pilot study, young adults (N = 62) with and without mild to moderate symptoms of depression were asked to discriminate facial images of infants and toddlers expressing six cardinal emotions. Results showed that elevated depressive affect was associated with more rapid recognition of negative emotions by females, and with potentiation of the typically observed sex difference, compared with non-depressed observers. Differences in endogenous affective status might be one proximate factor contributing to a female advantage in emotion recognition.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Data availability
The dataset reported here is available from the authors upon written request.
Code availability
Not applicable.
Notes
Medians are less subject than means to potential distortion caused by outlier trials (Ratcliff 1993).
Excludes one RT outlier > 3SD above the mean.
References
Anderson IM, Shippen C, Juhasz G, Chase D, Thomas E, Downey D, Toth ZG, Lloyd-Williams K, Elliott R, Deakin JFW (2011) State-dependent alteration in face emotion recognition in depression. Br J Psychiatry 198:302–308. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.110.078139
Bethea CL, Lu NZ, Gundlah C, Streicher JM (2002) Diverse actions of ovarian steroids in the serotonin neural system. Front Neuroendocrinol 23:41–100. https://doi.org/10.1006/frne.2001.0225
Colasante T, Mossad SI, Dudek J, Haley DW (2017) The special status of sad infant faces: age and valence differences in adults’ cortical face processing. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 12(4):586–595. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsw166
De Berardis D, Fornaro M, Valchera A, Cavuto M, Perna G, Di Nicola M, Serafini G, Carano A, Pompili M, Vellante F, Orsolini L, Fiengo A, Ventriglio A, Yong-Ku K, Martinotti G, Di Giannantonio M, Tomasetti C (2018) Eradicating suicide at its roots: preclinical bases and clinical evidence of the efficacy of ketamine in the treatment of suicidal behaviors. Int J Mol Sci 19:2888. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms19102888
Elfenbein HA, Foo MD, White J, Tan HH, Aik VC (2007) Reading your counterpart: the benefit of emotion recognition accuracy for effectiveness in negotiation. J Nonverbal Behav 31:205–223. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.926577
Emde RN, Butterfield PM, Osofsky JD (1987) IFEEL pictures: Infant facial expressions of emotion from looking at pictures. University of Colorado, Denver
Hampson E, Istasy P, Owais S, Chow JA, Howidi B, Ouellette SJ (2021) Sex differences in the recognition of children’s emotional expressions: a test of the fitness threat hypothesis. Evol Psychol Sci 7:45–60. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-020-00254-w
Hampson E, van Anders SM, Mullin LI (2006) A female advantage in the recognition of emotional facial expressions: test of an evolutionary hypothesis. Evol Hum Behav 27:401–416
Heron W (1957) Perception as a function of retinal locus and attention. Am J Psychol 70(1):38–48
Hoffmann H, Kessler H, Eppel T, Rukavina S, Traue HC (2010) Expression intensity, gender and facial emotion recognition: women recognize only subtle facial emotions better than men. Acta Physiol (Oxf) 135:278–283. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2010.07.012
Ibrahim AK, Kelly SJ, Adams CE, Glazebrook C (2013) A systematic review of studies of depression prevalence in university students. J Psychiatr Res 47:391–400. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2012.11.015
Lacerda ALT, Keshavan MS, Hardan AY, Yorbik O, Brambilla P, Sassi RB, Nicoletti M, Mallinger AG, Frank E, Kupfer DJ, Soares JC (2004) Anatomic evaluation of the orbitofrontal cortex in major depressive disorder. Biol Psychiat 55:353–358. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2003.08.021
Leppänen JM (2006) Emotional information processing in mood disorders: a review of behavioral and neuroimaging findings. Curr Opin Psychiatry 19:34–39. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.yco.0000191500.46411.00
Merens W, Van der Does AJW, Spinhoven P (2007) The effects of serotonin manipulations on emotional information processing and mood. J Affect Disord 103:43–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2007.01.032
Proverbio AM, Matarazzo S, Brignone V, Del Zotto M, Zani A (2007) Processing valence and intensity of infant expressions: the roles of expertise and gender. Scand J Psychol 48:477–485
Radloff LS (1977) The CES-D scale: a self-report depression scale for research in the general population. Appl Psychol Meas 1:385–401
Ratcliff R (1993) Methods for dealing with reaction time outliers. Psychol Bull 114:510–532
Reber J, Tranel D (2017) Sex differences in the functional lateralization of emotion and decision making in the human brain. J Neurosci Res 95:270–278. https://doi.org/10.1002/jnr.23829
Romans S, Clarkson R, Einstein G, Petrovic M, Stewart D (2012) Mood and the menstrual cycle: a review of prospective data studies. Gend Med 9(5):361–384
Scheuerecker J, Meisenzahl EM, Koutsouleris MD, Roesner M, Schöpf V, Linn J, Wiesmann M, Brückmann H, Möller HJ, Frodl T (2010) Orbitofrontal volume reductions during emotion recognition in patients with major depression. J Psychiatry Neurosci 35:311–320. https://doi.org/10.1503/jpn.090076
Spielberger CD, Ritterband LM, Reheiser EC, Brunner TM (2003) The nature and measurement of depression. Int J Clin Health Psychol 3:209–234
Steiner M, Young EA (2008) Hormones and mood. In: Becker JB, Berkley KJ, Geary N, Hampson E, Herman JP, Young EA (eds) Sex differences in the brain: from genes to behavior. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 405–426
Székely E, Lucassen N, Tiemeier H, Bakermans-Kranenburg MJ, Van Ijzendoorn MH, Kok R, Jaddoe VWV, Hofman A, Verhulst FC, Herba CM (2014) Maternal depressive symptoms and sensitivity are related to young children’s facial expression recognition: the Generation R Study. Dev Psychopathol 26:333–345. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579413001028
Thompson AE, Voyer D (2014) Sex differences in the ability to recognize non-verbal displays of emotion: a meta-analysis. Cogn Emot 28:1164–1195. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2013.875889
Tottenham N (2013) Early social deprivation and the neurobiology of interpreting facial expressions. In: Banaji MR, Gelman SA (eds) Navigating the social world: what infants, children, and other species can teach us. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 155–160
Tsuchida A, Fellows LK (2012) Are you upset? Distinct roles for orbitofrontal and lateral prefrontal cortex in detecting and distinguishing facial expressions of emotion. Cereb Cortex 22:2904–2912. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhr370
Walker BN, Stanley RM (2004) Eye movement and reaction time are both important in assessment of dialog box usability. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 48th Annual Meeting, 48(5). https://doi.org/10.1177/154193120404800512
Webb R, Ayers S (2014) Cognitive biases in processing infant emotion by women with depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder in pregnancy or after birth: a systematic review. Cogn Emot 29(7):1278–1294. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2014.977849
Weigard A, Loviska AM, Beltz AM (2021) Little evidence for sex or ovarian hormone influences on affective variability. Sci Rep 11:20925
Williams LM, Mathersul D, Palmer DM, Gur RC, Gur RE, Gordon E (2009) Explicit identification and implicit recognition of facial emotions: I. Age effects in males and females across 10 decades. J Clin Exp Neuropsychol 31(3):257–277. https://doi.org/10.1080/13803390802255635
Wingenbach TSH, Ashwin C, Brosnan M (2018) Sex differences in facial emotion recognition across varying expression intensity levels from videos. PLoS ONE 13(1):e0190634
Acknowledgements
We thank C. Ahmed for assistance with data collection and R. Harshman for writing the MATLAB scripts. J.A. Chow is now a student at the University of Alberta. C. Fleury is at Women’s College Hospital, Toronto.
Funding
This study was funded by grant #138017 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
EH is responsible for study conceptualization and design, student supervision, statistical analysis, writing the first draft. JAC is responsible for data collection and data entry, and comments on the manuscript. CF is responsible for data scoring and data checking, and comments on the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Ethics approval and consent to participate
This study was approved by the Non-Medical Research Ethics Board at the University of Western Ontario and was performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. All participants provided written informed consent to participate in the study.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher's note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hampson, E., Chow, J.A. & Fleury, C. Depressive affect moderates the effects of biological sex on the recognition of facial emotion. Arch Womens Ment Health 25, 493–499 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00737-022-01208-w
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00737-022-01208-w