Awareness is determined by emotion and gender
Ema Jugović, Marta Poyo Solanas, Beatrice De Gelder
bioRxiv Preprint Server February 27, 2024 preprint DOI: 10.1101/2024.02.27.579317 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Experimental study |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 45 |
| Population | Human participants |
| Intervention | visual masking and whole-body images |
| Citations | 2 |
| Key findings | Threatening expressions are more easily detected than fearful ones, especially by males presented with male stimuli. |
Abstract
Traditionally, consciousness studies focus on domain general cognitive processes rather than on specific information reaching subjective awareness. The present study (N = 45) used visual masking and whole-body images to investigate whether the specific emotional expression as well as gender of the stimuli and of the participants impact awareness. Our results show that participants’ awareness responses reflect differences in the specific emotion of the stimuli, that these differences are a function of the gender of the stimuli as well as the gender of the participants and that minimal awareness may be associated with emotion specific features of the body images. Overall, we observed that threatening expressions are more easily detected than fearful ones, especially by males presented with male stimuli. Our findings underscore the importance of affective factors for theories of consciousness and underscore the significance of gender differences in emotional processing, often overlooked in past face and body emotion recognition studies.