CarnalNation

A study published in the Journal of Vision reveals that women with angry facial expressions are more likely to be perceived as male. "Why is it that men can be bastards and women must wear pearls and smile?" asks author Lynn Hecht Schafran. Researchers believe that it may be because femininity is associated with happiness while men are expected to be angrier.

Two separate studies asked participants to identify the sex of a sequence of faces with varied facial expressions. In one study, angry faces with lowered brows and tight lips were more likely to be labelled as male whereas faces with raised eyebrows and smiling lips were identified as female. In the second study, participants labelled faces that conveyed feelings of happiness, anger, sadness, fear and neutrality. Male faces were identified more quickly than female ones and angry female faces took the longest to categorize.

“The present research shows that the association between anger and men and happiness and women is so strong that it can influence the decisions about the gender of another person when that person is viewed briefly," said Ursula Hess from the University of Quebec at Montreal. She also explains that features that are perceived as male (a high forehead, square jaw and thick eyebrows) are associated with dominance while features that are associated with femininity (round baby faces and large eyes) result in the perception of warmth and approachability.

The researchers believe that the face is a complex social signalling system that is intrinsically linked to sex and gender. "This difference in how the emotions and social traits of the two sexes are perceived could have significant implications for social interactions in a number of settings,” says Hess. "Our research demonstrates that equivalent levels of anger are perceived as more intense when shown by men rather than women, and happiness as more intense when shown by women rather than men. It also suggests that it is less likely for men to be perceived as warm and caring and for women to be perceived as dominant."