Social categorization and the perception of emotional expressions

e goal of Chapter 2 was to demonstrate the in"uence of general evaluations and stereotype associations on emotion recognition. Earlier research has shown that evaluative connotations between social category members and emotional expression predict whether recognition of positive or negative emotional expressions will be facilitated (e.g. Hugenberg 2005). In the current chapter we tested the hypothesis that stereotype associations in"uence emotion recognition processes, especially when the di#erence between valences of emotional expressions does not come into play. In line with this notion, when participants in the present two studies were asked to classify positive versus negative emotional expressions (i.e. happy versus anger, or happy versus sadness), valence congruency e#ects were found. Importantly, however, in a comparative context without di#erences in valence in which participants were asked to classify two distinct negative emotions (i.e. anger versus sadness) we found that recognition facilitation occurred for stereotypically associated discrete emotional expressions. With this, the current results indicate that a distinction between general evaluative and cognitive routes can be made in emotion recognition processes. is chapter is based on: Bijlstra, G. , Holland, R.W. , & Wigboldus, D.H. J. (2010). e social face of emotion recognition: Evaluations versus stereotypes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 657-663. 2 38 The Social Face of Emotion Recognition: Evaluations Versus Stereotypes C hpter 2 Fast and correct recognition of emotional expressions is a prerequisite for ! uent social interaction. A face carries a wealth of informative cues and can say more than a thousand words. Apart from unchangeable features in the face that carry information regarding identity or social category (e.g. sex or ethnicity), changeable features reveal how someone is feeling at that speci"c moment (e.g. happy, angry or sad). Previous research has shown that unchangeable features can in! uence the interpretation of changeable facial features in emotional recognition. More speci"cally, this research focused on the interplay between social categorization and recognition of emotional expressions (e.g. Becker, Kenrick, Neuberg, Blackwell, & Smith, 2007; Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002; Hugenberg, 2005; Hugenberg & Bodenhausen, 2003; Hutchings & Haddock, 2008). How do social categorization processes in! uence emotion recognition? One route that has been recently explored is that evaluative category associations facilitate or inhibit the recognition of evaluative congruent emotions. For example, Hugenberg (2005) demonstrated, in line with an evaluative processes account, that white American participants show a recognition speed advantage when judging whether a white target’s face displays a positive (happy) facial expression compared to negative (angry or sad) facial expressions. #is phenomenon is called the happy face advantage (Leppänen & Hietanen, 2003). #is e$ect was found by Hugenberg to be reversed when the expresser of the emotion was black, with white participants showing a recognition advantage for both negative emotions (angry and sad) compared to the positive emotion. In a similar vein, Hugenberg and Sczesny (2006) found evidence for di$erences in emotion recognition depending on gender: for female target faces a greater happy face advantage was found than for male target faces. #e authors conclude that these e$ects are best explained by the spreading of evaluative associations: the valence of the target face, as triggered by the category, serves as a prime for recognizing emotional expressions independently of the discrete emotion being expressed. However, a vast amount of research revealed evidence that social categories not only trigger evaluative associations, but also stereotype associations (e.g. Devine, 1989). #e latter contain speci"c traits and cognitions that are linked to the social category. An increasing body of evidence emphasizes the importance of differentiating between evaluative and stereotype associations. For example, Amodio and Devine (2006) recently demonstrated that evaluative and cognitive processes di$erentially in! uence behavioral responses. Moreover, they argue that di$erent The Social Face of Emotion Recognition: Evaluations Versus Stereotypes 39 C ha pt er 2 neurological mechanisms underlie these e! ects. However, in emotion recognition literature such a distinction between processes has yet to be made. We argue that also stereotype associations in"uence the ease of emotion recognition. Speci#cally, discrete emotions such as anger and sadness di! er from each other despite both having a negative valence. Similarly to traits, some discrete emotional expressions are more stereotypical for some social categories than for others, independent of their general valence. For instance, anger is more strongly associated with men than women, while sadness is more strongly associated with women than men (Plant, Hyde, Keltner, & Devine, 2000; Fischer, Rodriquez Mosquera, Vianen, & Manstead, 2004). Although both emotions have a negative valence, they are associated with di! erent social categories. In this sense, emotions do not di! er from other stimuli or characteristics that may have a better normative #t with one social category than the other (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987). Importantly, these stereotype associations may facilitate or inhibit the recognition of emotional expressions (e.g. sadness is recognized faster on female faces than on male faces). In this way, stereotypical views may con#rm themselves in biased emotion recognition. Interestingly, the #ndings of Hugenberg (2005; Hugenberg & Sczesny, 2006) did not reveal any evidence of stereotype e! ects on emotion recognition. No categorical di! erences in the processing of discrete negative emotions between social categories were found. $erefore, their #ndings suggest that social category information in"uences emotion recognition by means of general evaluative connotations with the category, rather than by speci#c associations between the category (e.g. black targets) and discrete emotional expressions (e.g. anger). In our view, however, these null #ndings for stereotype associations could be due to the research method that was employed in these earlier studies. In prior work, participants categorized both positive and negative emotional expressions on faces of two distinct social categories within one task (e.g. Hugenberg, 2005; Hugenberg & Sczesny, 2006). As a result, di! erences in valence were highly salient within the task and participant performance was in"uenced by general a! ective reactions towards the social categories under investigation. Consequently, recognition e! ects concerning discrete emotional expressions may have been overshadowed by general evaluative e! ects. $e goal of the present two studies was to demonstrate the in"uence of not only valence but also of stereotype associations on emotion recognition. In order 40 The Social Face of Emotion Recognition: Evaluations Versus Stereotypes C hpter 2 to do this, comparative context was taken into account. On the one hand, the experimental design employed ‘dual-valence comparative context conditions’ which contained a positive versus a discrete negative emotional expression. On the other hand, we used a ‘single-valence comparative context condition’ in which two distinct negative emotional expressions were compared. In the dual-valence comparative context, participants categorized happy versus angry, or happy versus sad expressions, whereas in the single-valence comparative context, anger versus sadness were categorized. In the remainder of this article we will refer to these comparative context conditions as singleor dual-valence conditions. When people are asked to classify two distinctive negative emotional expressions, the in! uence of valence on emotion recognition advantages is thought to be decreased. If category information in! uences emotion recognition only by means of valence, both negative emotions should be recognized faster when expressed by a member of a relatively negatively associated social category compared to members of a more positively evaluated social category. However, if speci"c stereotype associations (or cognitive instead of a#ective processes) in! uence emotion recognition speed, especially the discrete negative emotional expression most strongly associated with the social category should be recognized faster compared to less strong or unassociated negative emotional expressions. We therefore expected associated category-valence to in! uence emotion recognition speed in the dual-valence conditions, while stereotype associations were expected to facilitate emotion recognition processes in the single-valence condition. $e social categories employed were White and Moroccan men (Study 2.1) and men versus women (Study 2.2). STUDY 2.1: WHITE VERSUS MOROCCAN $e Moroccan community is currently one of the most negatively stereotyped groups in the Netherlands (Verkuyten & Zarembe, 2005) and is associated with criminality (Dotsch, Wigboldus, Langner, and van Knippenberg, 2008), a trait more strongly related to anger than to sadness. Furthermore, Otten and Stapel (20072) demonstrated that Dutch students perceive the Moroccan social category 2 ! is paper has been examined by the Levelt Committee and was not indicated as being based on fraudulent research practices. The Social Face of Emotion Recognition: Evaluations Versus Stereotypes 41 C ha pt er 2 as more aggressive and hostile than the White Dutch social category. We expected that in dual-valence conditions, in general, negative emotions (both anger and sadness) would be recognized faster from Moroccan compared to White faces, whereas happy emotional expressions would be recognized faster from White compared to Moroccan faces. is would be in line with earlier valence congruency "ndings (e.g. Hugenb