The role of temperament and gender in functional hemispheric asymmetry and the perception of emotion

Research investigating the relation between Functional Hemispheric Asymmetry (FHA) and the perception of affect in clinical as well as normal populations, is characterized by contradictory findings regarding the role of the different hemispheres, especially as regards the perception of various valencies of emotions. Although various methodological problems or error variances are often blamed for the contradictory findings and general lack of consensus, the literature is increasingly pointing to the existence of evidently reliable individual differences between people regarding their hemispheric functioning. The problem investigated in this study was to determine the possible role of some organismic variables in FHA. The objectives of this study were to determine whether there were significant differences in the direction of FHA-differences, as well as the relative performance, of groups divided according to gender and temperament characteristics and whether the relevant organismic variables offered a possible means of explaining the contradictions in research results on FHA and the perception of emotion. The subject population (N = 112) comprised four groups of right-handed students selected in terms of gender and temperament (introversion-extraversion). Differential hemispheric performance in terms of response accuracy and latency was determined by means of introversion-extraversion, plays a significant role in the degree and direction of FHA in the perception of emotion. It appears that the organismic variable gender could possible offer a partial explanation for the contradictory results in the literature specifically with regard to FHA in the perception for emotion generally, and in respect of different valencies of emotion. However, the lack of significance in some of the results, especially with regard to men, impedes a firm empirical conclusion and explanation of the results.