Emotions: Fear and Loathing Women Recognize More Quickly
October 24th 2009 -
Women can interpret feelings in the face of their fellow men better than men. This is particularly true fear and loathing: women acknowledge these feelings, both in face expression and her voice better and faster, as shown by neuroscientists to Olivier Collignon of Canada’s University of Montreal in a recent study. The researchers let the emotions while represented by an actor. The results could help to better understand psychological disorders such as autism.
To investigate the perception of emotion, yet most of the subjects were shown photographs of faces that look, for example happy, anxious or angry. Collignon and his team instead committed actor. This represented the feelings of fear and disgust, either by their face expression or by a call. “The expression of another person plays an important role in the perception of emotions. It also stimulates certain areas of the brain “to process this information, says Collignon.
The trial participants – 23 men and 23 women aged 18 to 45 years – were exposed to either the face expressions of the actors who heard the shout and took both simultaneously true. Then they should as quickly as possible to say whether they had seen their counterpart in fear or disgust.
Compared to men, women recognized the feeling in the expression of their counterpart faster. A combination of face expressions and sounds, they could quickly assign. Women continue to recognize the feelings more quickly if they were represented by an actor instead of an actress.
“In our investigation, it is not a matter of showing that women or men are superior in certain skills,” points Collignon. “The aim of our research is to better understand mental disorders, which differ greatly between men and women.” An important example of autism, a disease that affects more men than women. Those affected have great difficulty with their feelings of others identified. After a controversial theory of autism is an extreme form of male behavior, which is characterized by a lower sensitivity. “The fact that men perceive support and express emotions less efficiently, this theory in a certain way,” says Collignon.
Tags: face expression, fear, loathing, neuroscientist
