The social face of emotion recognition: Evaluations versus stereotypes

The goal of the present paper was to demonstrate the influence of general evaluations and stereotype associations on emotion recognition Earlier research has shown that evaluative connotations between social category members and emotional expression predict whether recognition of positive or negative emotional expressions will be facilitated (e g Hugenberg, 2005) In the cui rent paper we tested the hypothesis that stereotype associations influence emotion recognition processes, especially when the difference between valences of emotional expressions does not conic into play in line with this notion, when participants in the present two studies were asked to classify positive versus negative emotional expressions (i e. happy versus anger. or happy versus sadness), valence congruency effects were found Importantly, however, in a comparative context without differences in valence in which participants were asked to classify two distinct negative emotions (i e anger versus sadness) we found that recognition facilitation occurred for stereotypically associated disci ere emotional expressions With this, the cui rent results indicate that a distinction between general evaluative and cognitive routes can be made in emotion recognition processes (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc All lights reserved