Dominance Expression Conveyed By Different Facial Expressions In Men And Women
Christopher Philip
Researchers Shlomo Hareli and Noga Shomrat, University of Haifa as well as Ursula Hess, University of Quebec at Montreal conducted two studies looking at the facial expressions of happiness, sadness, anger, shame, and neutral expressions and measured how they were perceived in men and women.
We understand that, in humans, power is important and it is ascribed to people with dominance. However, unclear exactly, is how dominance is achieved. Some studies, for example, have found that angry expressions leads to dominance, while others have found that people scoring higher on dominance are more permitted to use the expression – thus confounding the results.
People lower in status are expected to feel more sadness, fear, shame and embarrassment whereas those of higher status are expected to display pride and happiness.
However, the research has largely ignored neutral expressions and how they too can often be ascribed to dominance largely through indifference.
One thought on neutral expressions, as said by Paul Watzlawick Austrian-American family therapist, psychologist, communications theorist, and philosopher “one cannot not communicate.” Therefore, not reacting to a situation – is in fact, the reaction. However, what does not reacting say about an individual?
Recent ideas suggest that restrained emotional displays indicate mastery of one’s life as well as competence generally. Being relaxed, in other words, when faced with difficult circumstances, especially, leads to signs of high status and dominance. In other words, emotional reactions can be taken as a sign of weakness.
“In fact,” as said by the researchers, “it may be the case that reacting nonemotionally is even more characteristic of a high power individual than reacting to an event emotionally by showing anger.”
Research bears this out. Women, who kept a neutral face when hearing bad news, were rated as more competent.
The First Study
In the first study, subjects were shown images of men and women showing happiness, sadness, fear, anger, and emotional neutrality. The results showed that the expression of anger and happiness were not perceived as more dominant than neutral expressions. The sadness and fear expression were rated as significantly less dominant than the neutral expression. Men who expressed anger or happiness were rated as more dominant than men who expressed sadness or fear.
Women, on the other hand, who were shown in anger or happiness were rated as more dominant than those showing neutral or fear expressions. Sadness was rated as less dominant than neutral expressions, fear, anger and happiness.
The notable difference between men and women was the neutral facial expression where men and women differed significantly. Men benefited on dominance ratings with a neutral expression, whereas women did not.
The Second Study
In the second study, context was provided to two different sets of participants from different cultures, Canada and Israel.
The study was conducted online. Upon entering the study platform, the subjects were presented one of 3 videos portrayed by an actor. The actor delivered his explanation of the events leading up to a computer system failure in either a neutral, anger or shameful tone of voice. In each case, the actor denied doing anything to cause the problem and suggested a system bug. After watching the video the subjects were asked to make an evaluation of the actor.
The actor was perceived equally submissive when showing shame or neutral expressions but significantly less submissive when displaying anger.
Thus, the results suggest that anger signals dominance more than does shame, with the neutral expression closer to anger than shame.
Overall shame reduced the perceptions of dominance and anger reduced the perceptions of submissiveness. This suggests that dominance and submissiveness are not mirrors of themselves, and act independently from one another.
Drawing Conclusions
Over two studies it was shown that men’s anger expressions led to higher levels of dominance than did fear, sadness, and shame. However, dominance from anger or happiness were not higher than those from neutral expressions.
Women, on the other hand, achieved higher dominance from expressions of happiness and anger than from neutral expressions. Women in neutral expressions were rated as more submissive than dominant. As it did for men, the expression of sadness lowered perceived dominance.
That men benefit from a neutral expression whereas women do not in the perception of dominance suggests that dominance is a trait inherently ascribed to the male face. This is likely do morphological differences between men and women.
The message for women is clear, to deliver dominance display, use happy expressions with anger. Men have more latitude in dominance display were a neutral expression or anger as well as happiness.
Image Credit: Alessandro Valli
Resources
Hareli, Shlomo; Noga Shomrat and Ursula Hess. Emotional Versus Neutral Expressions and Perceptions of Social Dominance and Submissiveness. Emotion. 2019 9(3): 378-384. DOI: 10.1037/a0015958