Abstract
Women typically outperform men on the ability to assess other people’s nonverbal behavior. This difference might occur because women are taught to be more sensitive to emotional and nonverbal cues at a very early age compared to men. As a consequence, women might use a more favorable cognitive processing style than men during nonverbal decoding. The present study investigated whether this gender difference is due to the use of different cognitive information processing styles (global or local). Participants (N = 137) were Swiss undergraduate students that were randomly assigned to either a global (focusing on the whole) or a local (focusing on details) priming of information processing style, or to a control group. They then performed a nonverbal decoding task. Results showed that compared to the control group, local priming had beneficial and global priming detrimental effects for nonverbal decoding accuracy. This was due to an improved performance in men after the local priming; women’s performance was not significantly affected by the local priming. Global priming increased nonverbal decoding accuracy in men and decreased performance in women. We conclude that women already use the more beneficial local processing style by default and that men’s performance can be boosted when providing them a processing strategy.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ambady, N., & Gray, H. M. (2002). On being sad and mistaken: Mood effects on the accuracy of thin-slice judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 947–961. doi:10.1037//0022-3514.83.4.947.
Brody, L. R., & Hall, J. A. (1993). Gender and emotion. In M. Lewis & J. Haviland (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (pp. 447–460). New York: Guilford Press.
Chepenik, L. G., Cornew, L. A., & Farah, M. J. (2007). The influence of sad mood on cognition. Emotion, 7, 802–811. doi:10.1037/1528-3542.7.4.802.
Eyal, T., & Epley, N. (2010). How to seem telepathic: Enabling ming reading by matching construal. Psychological Science, 21, 700–705. doi:10.1177/0956797610367754.
Fiske, S. T., Lin, M., & Neuberg, S. L. (1999). The continuum model: Ten years later. In S. Chaiken & Y. Trope (Eds.), Dual process theories in social psychology (pp. 231–254). New York: The Guilford Press.
Gasper, K., & Clore, G. L. (2002). Attending to the big picture: Mood and global versus local processing of visual information. Psychological Science, 13, 34–40. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00406.
Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Hall, J. A. (1978). Gender effects in decoding nonverbal cues. Psychological Bulletin, 85, 845–857. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.85.4.845.
Hall, J. A. (1984). Nonverbal sex differences: Communication accuracy and expressive style. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Hall, J. A., & Bernieri, F. J. (Eds.). (2001). Interpersonal sensitivity: Theory and measurement. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Hall, G. B. C., Witelson, S. F., Szechtman, H., & Nahmias, C. (2003). Sex differences in functional activation patterns revealed by increased emotion processing demands. Brain Imaging, 15, 219–223. doi:10.1097/01.wnr.0000101310.64109.94.
Hall, J. A., Blanch, D. C., Horgan, T. G., Murphy, N. A., Rosip, J. C., & Schmid Mast, M. (2009). Motivation and interpersonal sensitivity: Does it matter how hard you try? Motivation and Emotion, 33, 291–302. doi:10.1007/s11031-009-9128-2.
Lee, T. M. C., Liu, H.-L., Hoosain, R., Liao, W.-T., Wu, C.-T., & Yuen, K. S. L. (2002). Gender differences in neural correlates of recognition of happy and sad faces in human assessed by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Neuroscience Letters, 333, 13–16. doi:10.1016/S0304-3940(02)00965-5.
Macrae, C. N., & Lewis, H. L. (2002). Do I know you? Processing orientation and face recognition. Psychological Science, 13, 194–196. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00436.
Marsh, A. A., Elfenbein, H. A., & Ambady, N. (2003). Nonverbal “accents”: Cultural differences in facial expressions of emotions. Psychological Science, 14, 373–376. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.24461.
McClure, E. B. (2000). A meta-analytic review of sex differences in facial expression processing and their development in infants, children, and adolescents. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 424–453. doi:10.1037//0033-2909.126.3.424.
Navon, D. (1977). Forest before trees: The precedence of global features in visual perception. Cognitive Psychology, 9, 353–383. doi:10.1016/0010-0285(77)90012-3.
Nisbett, R. E., & Miyamoto, Y. (2005). The influence of cultures: holistic versus analytic perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 467–473. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.08.004.
Peng, Y., Zebrowitz, L. A., & Lee, H. K. (1993). The impact of cultural background and cross-cultural experience on impressions of American and Korean male speakers. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 24, 203–220. doi:10.1177/0022022193242005.
Perren, S., Stadelmann, S., von Wyl, A., & von Klitzing, K. (2007). Pathways of behavioural and emotional symptoms in kindergarten children: What is the role of pro-social behaviour? European Child & Adolescence Psychiatry, 16, 209–214.
Phillips, L. H., Tunstall, M., & Channon, S. (2007). Exploring the role of memory in dynamic social cue decoding using dual task methodology. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 31, 137–152. doi:10.1007/s10919-007-0026-6.
Reber, R., & Flammer, A. (2002). The development of gender differences in affective expression and in the relationship between mood and achievement-related self-judgments. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 17, 377–392. doi:10.1007/BF03173592.
Rosenthal, R., & Rosnow, R. L. (1991). Essentials of behavioral research: Methods and data analysis. New York: McGraw Hill.
Rosenthal, R., Hall, J. A., DiMatteo, M. R., Rogers, P. L., & Archer, D. (1979). Sensitivity to nonverbal communication: The PONS test. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Rosip, J. C., & Hall, J. A. (2004). Knowledge of nonverbal cues, gender, and nonverbal decoding accuracy. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 28, 267–286. doi:10.1007/s10919-004-4159-6.
Schmid, P. C., Schmid Mast, M., Bombari, D., Mast, F. W., & Lobmaier, J. S. (2011). Information processing and gender effects in facial emotion recognition: An eye tracking study. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Schwartz, S. H., & Rubel, T. (2005). Sex differences in value priorities: Cross-cultural and multimethod studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 1010–1028. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.89.6.1010.
Schwarz, N. (1990). Feelings as information: Informational and motivational functions of affective states. In E. T. Higgins & R. Sorrentino (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundations of social behavior (Vol. 2, pp. 527–561). New York: Guilford Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Schmid, P.C., Schmid Mast, M., Bombari, D. et al. Gender Effects in Information Processing on a Nonverbal Decoding Task. Sex Roles 65, 102–107 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-011-9979-3
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-011-9979-3