Does Target Gender Appearance Moderate Sadness or Pain Perception?

• Samantha Haas, Neuroscience, University of Delaware

• Peter Mende-Siedlecki, Psychological & Brain Sciences, University of Delaware

People who do not conform to the typical gender binary face repercussions from many angles in daily life. While there is evidence of gender bias in the perception of emotion and pain, extant research is limited to the binary construct of gender, which perpetuates a lack of understanding about the non-cisgender/heteronormative population.

We conducted two studies to examine gender appearance as a moderator of social perception, with the former focusing on sadness (N=118 Prolific participants) and the latter on pain (N=121 Prolific participants). Participants rated digitally-rendered face morphs (varying in intensity; counterbalanced on race, gender, and expression) in terms of how strongly they resembled sadness (Exp. 1) and pain (Exp. 2).  We calculated points of subjective equality (PSE) values representing participants’ thresholds for seeing sadness or pain on faces within each category (e.g., Black female). Participants also rated the targets on masculinity/femininity and completed a dehumanization scale. 

We conducted separate 3-by-3 ANOVAs with post-hoc analyses to examine the effects of race and gender on emotion and pain perception. Contrary to predictions, we observed a main effect of gender on sadness perception, such that participants saw sadness more readily on male-appearing faces versus female-appearing and gender-ambiguous faces. Perceptual thresholds for sadness did not vary significantly by race, although they were in line with previous work. As predicted, we found a main effect of gender on pain perception: pain was perceived significantly less readily on male-appearing faces versus gender-ambiguous and female-appearing faces. Additionally, consistent with prior research, we observed a main effect of race, such that pain was seen more readily on Asian and White faces than Black faces. These results expand our understanding of how bottom-up gender cues shape perceptions of emotion and pain beyond the typical gender binary.