Fischer Agneta H, Kret Mariska E, Broekens Joost
University of Amsterdam, Department of Psychology, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Leiden University, Department of Psychology, Leiden, the Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2018 Jan 25;13(1):e0190712. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0190712. eCollection 2018.
Previous meta-analyses and reviews on gender differences in emotion recognition have shown a small to moderate female advantage. However, inconsistent evidence from recent studies has raised questions regarding the implications of different methodologies, stimuli, and samples. In the present research based on a community sample of more than 5000 participants, we tested the emotional sensitivity hypothesis, stating that women are more sensitive to perceive subtle, i.e. low intense or ambiguous, emotion cues. In addition, we included a self-report emotional intelligence test in order to examine any discrepancy between self-perceptions and actual performance for both men and women. We used a wide range of stimuli and models, displaying six different emotions at two different intensity levels. In order to better tap sensitivity for subtle emotion cues, we did not use a forced choice format, but rather intensity measures of different emotions. We found no support for the emotional sensitivity account, as both genders rated the target emotions as similarly intense at both levels of stimulus intensity. Men, however, more strongly perceived non-target emotions to be present than women. In addition, we also found that the lower scores of men in self-reported EI was not related to their actual perception of target emotions, but it was to the perception of non-target emotions.
以往关于情绪识别中性别差异的荟萃分析和综述显示，女性存在小到中等程度的优势。然而，近期研究中不一致的证据引发了关于不同方法、刺激因素和样本所产生影响的问题。在本研究中，我们以一个超过5000名参与者的社区样本为基础，检验了情绪敏感性假说，该假说认为女性对察觉细微的，即低强度或模糊的情绪线索更为敏感。此外，我们纳入了一项自我报告的情商测试，以考察男性和女性在自我认知与实际表现之间是否存在差异。我们使用了广泛的刺激因素和模型，在两种不同强度水平下呈现六种不同的情绪。为了更好地挖掘对细微情绪线索的敏感性，我们没有采用强制选择的形式，而是采用了不同情绪的强度测量方法。我们没有找到支持情绪敏感性观点的证据，因为在两种刺激强度水平下，男女对目标情绪强度的评分都相似。然而，男性比女性更强烈地感觉到存在非目标情绪。此外，我们还发现，男性在自我报告的情商测试中得分较低，这与他们对目标情绪的实际感知无关，但与对非目标情绪的感知有关。
