TY - JOUR

T1 - Perceiving emotion and sex from the body: evidence from the Garner task for independent processes

AU - Gandolfo, Marco

AU - Downing, Paul

N1 - 2019 Taylor & Francis. This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record.

PY - 2019/6/25

Y1 - 2019/6/25

N2 - The appearance of the body signals socially relevant states and traits, but the how these cues are perceived is not well understood. Here we examined judgments of emotion and sex from the body’s appearance. Understanding how we extract these cues is important because they are both salient and socially relevant. Participants viewed body images and either reported the emotion expressed by each body while ignoring its sex, or else reported the sex while ignoring its emotion. Following Garner’s logic, two types of blocks were compared. In control blocks, the task- irrelevant dimension was fixed (e.g. all male in an emotion judgment task), whereas in orthogonal blocks it varied orthogonally to the task-relevant dimension (e.g. male-female). Where two dimensions draw on shared processes, interference results in relatively slower responses during orthogonal blocks. In contrast, a finding of no Garner interference – efficient selection of the task-relevant dimension – is taken to reflect independent processes. Bayesian analyses revealed evidence of no Garner interference between sex and emotion judgments, showing that extraction of these distinct signals from the body’s appearance proceeds along largely parallel processing streams. These findings are informative about the mental architecture behind our perception of socially relevant characteristics of other people.

AB - The appearance of the body signals socially relevant states and traits, but the how these cues are perceived is not well understood. Here we examined judgments of emotion and sex from the body’s appearance. Understanding how we extract these cues is important because they are both salient and socially relevant. Participants viewed body images and either reported the emotion expressed by each body while ignoring its sex, or else reported the sex while ignoring its emotion. Following Garner’s logic, two types of blocks were compared. In control blocks, the task- irrelevant dimension was fixed (e.g. all male in an emotion judgment task), whereas in orthogonal blocks it varied orthogonally to the task-relevant dimension (e.g. male-female). Where two dimensions draw on shared processes, interference results in relatively slower responses during orthogonal blocks. In contrast, a finding of no Garner interference – efficient selection of the task-relevant dimension – is taken to reflect independent processes. Bayesian analyses revealed evidence of no Garner interference between sex and emotion judgments, showing that extraction of these distinct signals from the body’s appearance proceeds along largely parallel processing streams. These findings are informative about the mental architecture behind our perception of socially relevant characteristics of other people.

KW - Emotional body expression

KW - attention

KW - body posture

KW - body shape

KW - interference

KW - sex

U2 - 10.1080/02699931.2019.1634003

DO - 10.1080/02699931.2019.1634003

M3 - Article

JO - Cognition and Emotion

JF - Cognition and Emotion

SN - 0269-9931

ER -