Later a few attempts had been made to identify body motion parameters that are associated with the perceived social and personality traits –.
In one of the initial studies in the field, youthful point-light gaits were reported to appear as more powerful and happier. Yet this ability seems to require a period of maturation during childhood. Adult perceivers discern emotions and dispositions of others conveyed by point-light displays that reduce other kinds of information except for body motion –. We automatically determine not only speed, trajectory, and direction of their locomotion in order to avoid collisions and safely get through a crowd, but also spontaneously judge mood, intentions, dispositions and personality traits of walkers, which may be useful for a potential social interaction. In a nutshell, the study makes a further step in elucidation of gender impact on body language reading and on neurodevelopmental and psychiatric deficits in visual social cognition.Įvery single day we are watching strangers passing by. In contrast to widespread beliefs about female superiority in social cognition, the findings suggest that gender effects in recognition of emotions from human locomotion are modulated by emotional content of actions and opposite actor gender. For subtle emotional expressions only, males surpass females in recognition accuracy and readiness to respond to happy walking portrayed by female actors, whereas females exhibit a tendency to be better in recognition of hostile angry locomotion expressed by male actors. In the present work, female and male observers had to visually recognize emotions through point-light human locomotion performed by female and male actors with different emotional expressions.
Yet it is unclear whether our ability for body language reading is gender specific. Body language reading is of significance for daily life social cognition and successful social interaction, and constitutes a core component of social competence.