Gender differences among undergraduates in the recognition of emotional facial expressions

The perceptive accuracy of university students was compared between men and women, from sciences and humanities courses, to recognize emotional facial expressions. Emotional expressions have had increased interest in several areas involved with human interaction, reflecting the importance of perceptive skills in human expression of emotions for the effectiveness of communication. Two tests were taken: one was a quick exposure (0.5 s) of 12 faces with an emotional expression, followed by a neutral face. Subjects had to tell if happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust or surprise was flashed, and each emotion was shown twice, at random. On the second test 15 faces with the combination of two emotional expressions were shown without a time limit, and the subject had to name one of the emotions of the previous list. In this study, women perceived sad expressions better while men realized more happy faces. There was no significant difference in other emotions detection like anger, fear, surprise, disgust. Students of humanities and sciences areas of both sexes, when compared, had similar capacities to perceive emotional expressions.