Emotional Expressions Reduce the Own-Age Bias

© 2018 American Psychological Association. We are better at recognizing faces of our own age group compared to faces of other age groups. It has been suggested that this own-age bias (OAB) might occur because of perceptual-expertise and/or social- cognitive mechanisms. Although there is evidence to...

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Main Authors: Cronin, Sophie, Craig, Belinda, Lipp, Ottmar
Format: Journal Article
Published: American Psychological Association 2019
Online Access:http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP150101540
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/71092
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author Cronin, Sophie
Craig, Belinda
Lipp, Ottmar
author_facet Cronin, Sophie
Craig, Belinda
Lipp, Ottmar
author_sort Cronin, Sophie
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description © 2018 American Psychological Association. We are better at recognizing faces of our own age group compared to faces of other age groups. It has been suggested that this own-age bias (OAB) might occur because of perceptual-expertise and/or social- cognitive mechanisms. Although there is evidence to suggest effects of perceptual-expertise, little research has explored the role of social- cognitive factors. To do so, we looked at how the presence of an emotional expression on the face changes the magnitude of the OAB. Across 3 experiments, young adult participants were presented with young and older adult faces to remember. Neutral faces were first presented alone (Experiment 1) to validate the proposed paradigm and then presented along with angry (Experiment 2) and sad or happy faces (Experiment 3). The presence of an emotional expression improved the recognition of older adult faces, reducing the OAB which was evident for neutral faces. These results support the involvement of social- cognitive factors in the OAB, suggesting that a perceptual-expertise account cannot fully explain this face recognition bias.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-710922019-10-14T04:12:59Z Emotional Expressions Reduce the Own-Age Bias Cronin, Sophie Craig, Belinda Lipp, Ottmar © 2018 American Psychological Association. We are better at recognizing faces of our own age group compared to faces of other age groups. It has been suggested that this own-age bias (OAB) might occur because of perceptual-expertise and/or social- cognitive mechanisms. Although there is evidence to suggest effects of perceptual-expertise, little research has explored the role of social- cognitive factors. To do so, we looked at how the presence of an emotional expression on the face changes the magnitude of the OAB. Across 3 experiments, young adult participants were presented with young and older adult faces to remember. Neutral faces were first presented alone (Experiment 1) to validate the proposed paradigm and then presented along with angry (Experiment 2) and sad or happy faces (Experiment 3). The presence of an emotional expression improved the recognition of older adult faces, reducing the OAB which was evident for neutral faces. These results support the involvement of social- cognitive factors in the OAB, suggesting that a perceptual-expertise account cannot fully explain this face recognition bias. 2019 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/71092 10.1037/emo0000517 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP150101540 American Psychological Association fulltext
spellingShingle Cronin, Sophie
Craig, Belinda
Lipp, Ottmar
Emotional Expressions Reduce the Own-Age Bias
title Emotional Expressions Reduce the Own-Age Bias
title_full Emotional Expressions Reduce the Own-Age Bias
title_fullStr Emotional Expressions Reduce the Own-Age Bias
title_full_unstemmed Emotional Expressions Reduce the Own-Age Bias
title_short Emotional Expressions Reduce the Own-Age Bias
title_sort emotional expressions reduce the own-age bias
url http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP150101540
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/71092