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Open AccessArticle
You’re Beautiful When You Smile: Event-Related Brain Potential (ERP) Evidence of Early Opposite-Gender Bias in Happy Faces
by
Jonas Schmuck
Jonas Schmuck
,
Emely Voltz
Emely Voltz and
Henning Gibbons
Henning Gibbons *
Department of Psychology, University of Bonn, Kaiser-Karl-Ring 9, 53111 Bonn, Germany
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Brain Sci. 2024, 14(8), 739; https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci14080739 (registering DOI)
Submission received: 21 June 2024
/
Revised: 18 July 2024
/
Accepted: 22 July 2024
/
Published: 24 July 2024
Abstract
Studies of social cognition have shown gender differences regarding human face processing. One interesting finding is the enhanced processing of opposite-gender faces at different time stages, as revealed by event-related brain potentials. Crucially, from an evolutionary perspective, such a bias might interact with the emotional expression of the face. To investigate this, 100 participants (50 female, 50 male) completed an expression-detection task while their EEG was recorded. In three blocks, fearful, happy and neutral faces (female and male) were randomly presented, with participants instructed to respond to only one predefined target expression level in each block. Using linear mixed models, we observed both faster reaction times as well as larger P1 and late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes for women compared to men, supporting a generally greater female interest in faces. Highly interestingly, the analysis revealed an opposite-gender bias at P1 for happy target faces. This suggests that participants’ attentional templates may include more opposite-gender facial features when selectively attending to happy faces. While N170 was influenced by neither the face nor the participant gender, LPP was modulated by the face gender and specific combinations of the target status, face gender and expression, which is interpreted in the context of gender-emotion stereotypes. Future research should further investigate this expression and attention dependency of early opposite-gender biases.
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MDPI and ACS Style
Schmuck, J.; Voltz, E.; Gibbons, H.
You’re Beautiful When You Smile: Event-Related Brain Potential (ERP) Evidence of Early Opposite-Gender Bias in Happy Faces. Brain Sci. 2024, 14, 739.
https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci14080739
AMA Style
Schmuck J, Voltz E, Gibbons H.
You’re Beautiful When You Smile: Event-Related Brain Potential (ERP) Evidence of Early Opposite-Gender Bias in Happy Faces. Brain Sciences. 2024; 14(8):739.
https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci14080739
Chicago/Turabian Style
Schmuck, Jonas, Emely Voltz, and Henning Gibbons.
2024. "You’re Beautiful When You Smile: Event-Related Brain Potential (ERP) Evidence of Early Opposite-Gender Bias in Happy Faces" Brain Sciences 14, no. 8: 739.
https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci14080739
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