Abstract

Facial cues for age, race, and sex influence how we recognize facial expressions. For example, the faster recognition of happy compared to sad expression increases in magnitude when the faces are female compared to male-an effect termed Researchers have argued that presenting expressions of opposite valence (e.g., sad vs. happy expressions) creates an evaluative mindset and consequently, face sex affects emotion recognition via evaluative rather than stereotype associations. For the comparison between anger and happiness, recent results indicate that the effects of face sex are larger for female participants. However, for the critical comparison between sad and happy expressions-used to support the evaluative over the stereotype account-moderation by participant sex has not been adequately examined because the sample size of male participants has been too small. Here, I increased the number of male participants relative to previous studies. For male participants, the usual facilitation effect for female faces was reversed-the happy face facilitation effect was larger for male compared to female faces. The novel pattern for male participants-supporting an in-group bias-was replicated in Study 2, a preregistered study. Finally, ex-Gaussian analyses of the results of Study 1 and Study 2 helped identify differences between the current research and previous studies that had reported participant sex differences.