Effects of emotional changes on judgments of competence and warmth of male and female actors

Effects of Emotional Changes on Judgments of Competence and Warmth of Male and Female Actors.

Marguerite Nolan

UvA - Social Psychology

Product: Final Version Masterthesis

Date: 06-04-2015

Wordcount: 5331

Supervisor: Mw. Xia Fang, Msc

Abstract

Competence and warmth are two core dimensions of social judgment, which are respectively associated with dominant or submissive emotional expressions. Because dominance is related

to men, and submissiveness to women, social judgment can differ for gender. To date, research on emotional expressions has primarily used static emotions, though humans frequently change emotions in daily encounters. Participants (N=99) judged various actors

expressing emotional changes between anger, disgust and fear. It revealed that the target emotion exerts the greatest influence on perceptions of competence and warmth. However,

the anchor emotion also influences the eventual judgment. Furthermore, the effects of the gender of the actor were mixed. Incorporating dynamics of emotional expression implied to

provide new insights on how the nature and order of emotions affect social judgments.

Keywords: emotional change, emotional expression, social judgment, competence, warmth, gender differences

Dominance and Competence………. 5

Submissiveness and Warmth ……….6

Gender and Social Judgment ……….6

Dynamics of Emotional Expressions ……….8

Present Research ………..9 Methods ………...10 Participants ………10 Design ………10 Stimuli ………...………11 Procedure ………...……11 Results ………...12 Preliminary analysis ………..12 Main Analysis ……….13 Discussion ………..18

The Influence of the Target Emotion ……….18

The Influence of the Anchor Emotion ………19

Differences in Social Judgment for Men and Women ………19

Alternative Explanations and Limitations ………...…………20

Future Research………...……….……21

Conclusions ………...……….…21

Effects of Expressing Emotional Changes on Judgments of Competence and Warmth of Male and Female Actors

When senator Hillary Clinton passionately welled up on national television about her

political aspirations, discussions arised about Hillary being potentially too weak to be elected as president in 2008 (Goldenberg & Adams, 2008; Dowd, 2008). Interestingly enough, two years prior to this incident, Clinton was publicly dubbed as being too angry to make it to the White House (“GOP Strategy: Democrats too angry to succeed”, 2006; Goldenberg & Adams, 2008). Both disparate emotional displays seemed to derogate the extent to which Clinton was perceived as a potential competent president.

Inferences of Competence and Warmth: Two Core Dimensions

The example of Clinton illustrates two core dimensions that are identified as the fundamental aspects of social judgment: competence and warmth. The dimension of competence encompasses traits such as intelligence and determination on one end, and incapability on the other hand (Fischer, Eagly & Oosterwijk, 2013; Rudman & Phelan, 2008; Judd, James-Hawkins, Yzerbyt & Kashima, 2005). The dimension of warmth entails traits as sociability and attentiveness on one end, and unpopularity and irritability on the other end (Judd et al., 2005). Simply speaking, these dimensions divide the intellectually good and bad and the socially good and bad (Judd et al., 2005).

Social judgment is a matter that is of daily significance, and done on the basis of numerous facets of another person, including emotional expressions. Perceiving others emotional expressions facilitates important inferences that are of evolutionary significance (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008). Based upon others emotional displays, people infer traits, intentions and abilities of another person (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008; Van Kleef et al., 2011; Côte & Hideg, 2011). These inferences in turn, affect a variety of social phenomena such as leadership, negotiation outcomes, compliance and conformity (Fischer et al, 2013;

Van Kleef, De Dreu & Manstead, 2004). Thus, the expression of emotions facilitates particular social judgments, on dimensions of competence and warmth. Three emotional expressions and their relationship to competence and warmth shall be introduced below. These are anger, disgust and fear.

Dominance and Competence

Expressions of anger have shown to increase the perceived competence and social status of the expresser (Lewis, 2000; Brescoll & Uhlmann, 2008; Hareli, Hess & Shomrat, 2009; Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren & Hall, 2005). Anger display is associated with higher status conferral, higher perceptions of dominance and higher limits in negotiations (Van Doorn, Van Kleef & Van der Pligt, 2015; Filipowicz, Barsade & Melwani, 2011). Hence, the expression of anger conveys traits that are high in dominance and thus competence, but low in affiliation.

Disgust is another emotional expression that is highly associated with power and

dominance (Knutson, 1996; Tiedens, 2001; Carney, Hall & Smit LeBeau, 2005; Côte, Hideg 2011). Research shows that the expression of disgust –like anger- transmits dominance, independence of others, and evokes low affiliation (Said, Sebe & Todorov, 2009). However, little is known about disgust in relation to inferences of competence. A distinction between disgust and anger is argued in literature, despite both emotions being dubbed as semantic equivalents (Hutcherson & Gross, 2010). Disgust is typified by condemnation and aversion (Hodson & Costello, 2007), which origins lay in the use of this expression as a mechanism to avoid disease (Oaten, Stevenson & Case, 2009). Also, disgust is expressed in situations that are perceived as morally unacceptable (Shnall, Heidt, Clore & Jordan, 2008). Furthermore, research on stereotypes shows people experience disgust toward out-groups as an emotion that dehumanizes another person or party (Hodson & Costello, 2007). Thus, expressing

disgust is associated with low perceptions of warmth and affiliation. With regard to gender, disgust is considered a gender-neutral emotion (Algoe, Buswell & DeLamater, 2000; Plant, Hyde, Keltner & Devine, 2000). However, very little is known about expressing disgust in relation to judgments of competence directly. Previous research on neutral faces that resemble an emotional expression revealed that faces that resemble disgust positively correlate with judgments of meanness, unhappiness and weirdness. Furthermore, particular faces negatively correlate with judgments of intelligence and emotional stability, which are related to judgments of competence (Said et al., 2009). Hereby it seems that disgust is more associated with incompetence rather than competence. The dominant aspect of disgust however, implies otherwise.

Submissiveness and Warmth

On the contrary, emotions that are higher in submissiveness are more likely to be associated with warmth (Hess, Adams & Kleck, 2005; Hareli et al., 2009; Côte & Hideg, 2011). Fear is one of those emotions. Fear signals a threat in the environment, communicates worry and nervousness (Van Kleef, Van Doorn, Heerdink & Koning, 2011). In some

scholarly articles it is argued that the expression of fear evokes inferences associated with warmth (Hess et al., 2010; Côte & Hideg, 2011), whereas others state that fear is merely low in dominance, but not necessarily high in affiliation (Knutson, 1996; Tiedens, 2001; Van Kleef et al., 2011). What is a well-established assumption about fear is that the expression of it is more likely linked to female expressers rather than male expressers (Algoe et al., 2000; Plant et al., 2000).

Gender and Social Judgment

The case of Hillary Clinton has sparked much discussion as some fellow male candidates, and even presidents in office, are equally known for their emotional expressiveness, but need

not to deal with the issue of being questioned in capability (Dwivedy, 2013; Weber, 2014). Needless to say, this case suggests that not every person’s emotional expressions are not perceived and judged equally. This matter is of social significance, as gender inequity momentarily is more of a problem for women than for men. With a gradual change, men however continue to occupy the majority of upper-level positions within organizations (Rudman & Phelan, 2008). Whether a person is assigned to high status jobs and salaries depends on the extent to which a person is judged as competent. As emotional expressions are an important source of social judgment and influencing others, it can be important for women to effectively manage their emotional expressions in order to remain or achieve a competent impression in workplace (Côte & Hideg, 2011).

Research shows that women expressing anger in professional settings are perceived as being less competent than men (Brescoll & Uhlmann, 2008; Rudman & Phelan, 2008). In studies, women have been appointed lower status and lower incomes compared to men who expressed anger (Lewis, 2000; Brescoll & Uhlmann, 2008; Rudman & Phelan, 2008). Expressions of sadness have known to derogate perceived competence in both cases, but for men in particular (Fischer et al., 2013). These results have been explained by gender

endorsement (Lewis, 2000). The extent to which an emotion is gender-endorsed affects the inferences about the expressed emotion. Exhibiting behaviours or emotions that are not gender-endorsed are associated with derogating perceptions of competence within a leader (Lewis, 2000). A woman expressing anger is an example of a person displaying a non-gender endorsed emotion. Another example is a man expressing sadness. The explanation for

gender-endorsement of emotions lies in the Social Role Theory, which states that descriptive norms of emotional expression and gender are related to division of labour (Eagly & Karau, 2002). As women fulfil domestic roles, women are expected to be expressive in a manner that is congruent with their lesser-power roles and status. Particular expressions are ought to serve

‘the greater good’ and maintain communality. Thus, submissive emotions are perceived as more appropriate for women to express. On the contrary, men fulfil the role of the provider, and are thus expected to express high power emotions, that serve ambitions and self-reliance (Rudman & Phelan, 2008; Fiske et al., 2002). According to the backlash theory (Rudman & Phelan, 2008), this incongruence has penalizing effects on inferences made about the

expressers traits, including competence. For instance, a study showed that a typical woman is perceived as being low in competence, but high in warmth. A typical man however, is

perceived as high in competence and high in warmth, which somewhat refutes

aforementioned findings. Furthermore, capable skilful women were perceived as socially distant and cold (Heilman & Okimoto, 2007). This exemplifies how it is not impossible for women to be judged as competent, however particular judgments come at a price in other domains of social judgment, such as warmth. On gender differences in social judgment, literature remains not entirely conclusive, but it suffices to say that women suffer a slight disadvantage in organizational context.

Dynamics of Emotional Expressions

An important side note to the aforementioned research is the primary focus on static emotional expressions. To date, much of the research on emotional expressions and social judgment is based on the expression of one static emotion, or the change from a neutral state to an emotional state (Krumhuber, Kappas & Manstead, 2013; Filipowicz et al., 2011). In our day-to-day interactions however, emotional expressions are dynamic and frequently change from one emotion to the other. This phenomenon is referred to as emotional change; a field of study that is currently developing and growing, however remains under-examined. Emotional change consists of at least two states: an anchor emotion (the emotion which the expression starts with) and a target emotion (the emotion which the expression changes into). As research on the expression of particular emotions in dynamic displays is scarce, it is still

unclear how varying displays of expressions affect judgements of competence or warmth of the expressers. To improve the ecological validity of studies regarding the influence of emotional expression, the dynamics of emotional expressions should be taken into account (Krumhuber et al, 2013; Filipowicz et al., 2001).

Present Research

In order to examine the effects of emotional change on social judgments of competence and warmth for male and female expressers, it is to be stressed to adapt to a paradigm that aligns to real-life interactions. As previously stated, in daily life one does not merely stick to the expression of a single emotion. Nor are target as well as anchor emotions consistently semantically equivalent or gender-stereotypical (i.e., a woman could express a communal feminine emotion such as sadness, as well as a masculine emotion within a short period of time). Thus, it is interesting to not only explore the effects of two high dominance emotions (e.g. disgust and anger), but also the effects of an emotional change consisting of emotional expressions that are of ‘opposite’ nature (e.g. anger and fear).

To understand the dynamic effects of an emotional change, it is interesting to investigate which one of the expressed emotions exerts the most influence on the eventual social

judgment: the target emotion, or the anchor emotion. To our knowledge, there is momentarily no literature providing direct insight which emotion is emphasized most for social judgment. We thus hypothesize that the target emotion exerts greater influence on social judgment than the anchor emotion (Hypothesis 1). For example, a target emotion that signals dependence and neediness (i.e. fear) might imply to an observer that the expresser has eventually not been able to take control of the situation, and is less competent.

Considering the gender of the expresser, we expect that a person expressing a gender-typical target emotion will receive fewer backlashes in social judgment, than a counter gender-typical

emotion (Hypothesis 2). For example, a man expressing fear as a target emotion (counter-stereotypical) will be perceived as less competent than a woman (gender-(counter-stereotypical). On the other hand, a woman expressing anger will be perceived as less competent than a man expressing anger.

Lastly, we hypothesize that the nature of the target emotion will determine the extent to which one is judged as competent or warm (Hypothesis 3). For example, we expect that a target emotion that is high in dominance results into lower perceptions of warmth, but higher perceptions of competence. On the other end, we expect a target emotion that is high in submissiveness to result in higher perceptions of warmth, and lower perceptions of competence for both male and female actors.

Methods

Participants

Participants will be recruited through the University of Amsterdam. In return for their participation, they will receive half a research point for partaking in the study. The recruiting announcement and the introductory explanation given to them will describe that the purpose of the study is to learn about their impressions of people. Participants will also fulfil another similar experiment that is not related to this thesis. Both experiments take 10 minutes and will be separated by a non-related computer game task of 10 minutes. The order of experiments shall be counterbalanced between participants.

Design

A 6 (Emotional Change: anger–to-disgust, disgust-to-anger, anger-to-fear, fear-to-anger, disgust-to-fear, fear-to-disgust) x 2 (Gender of Expresser: male, female) study will be

conducted to test the effects of emotional change and gender of the expresser on the perceived competence of the expresser.

Stimuli

Six Dutch actors (three male and three female) were selected from the Radboud Faces Database (Langner, Dotsch, Bijlstra, Wigboldus, Hawk, & van Knippenberg, 2010), with three facial expressions (anger, disgust and fear) for each actor. Three emotion pairs in two directions (anger–to-disgust, disgust-to-anger, anger-to-fear, far-to-anger, disgust-to-fear, fear-to-disgust) per face will be made using a digital morphing program (Fantamorph; http://www.fantamorph.com/). Each morph encompasses 26 fames, in which adjoining frames differ from each other by four percent. Every morph lasts a total of 2000 ms, with 33 ms between each frame and an extension of 600 ms for the first frame and the last frame. A total of 36 morphs (3 emotion pairs x 2 directions x 2 genders x 3 actors) were included.

Procedure

The experiment will entail judgments of competence based on dynamic expressions, and of static expressions. Between participants, the order of the tasks is counterbalanced. The procedure of each part of the study is described below.

Each trial will start with a fixation cross, displayed in the centre of the screen for 500 ms, followed by a movie clip lasting 2000 ms. Immediately following the last frame of the clip, a grey screen with the scale of competence judgments appears. The scale includes ratings of competence, intelligence, skilfulness and ability (α=.89; Carlsson, 2008). The items or warmth included rating warmth, friendliness, sincerity and good-naturedness (α=.93; Bloodhart, 2009). Both skills range from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much). Furthermore, both scales are derived from scales used by Fiske, Cuddy, Glick and Xu (2002) but are

successfully reduced to a scale of four items. This was preferred considering the relatively short presentation of stimuli. The order of the questions are the same within every participant, but counterbalanced between every participant. All four questions will simultaneously appear on the screen. Participants will complete 3 practice trials, followed by two blocks of 6 trails each (each emotional change displayed by a unique actor). Within each block, all the stimuli shall be presented in a random order.

Results

Preliminary Analysis

Twenty-two men (age M = 21.82, SD= 2.77) and seventy-seven women (age M = 20.35, SD = 1.86) participated in this study (N=99) in return for course credit. It will be recalled that the latter emotion expressed within an emotional change, may be of significance for the eventual social judgment of its expresser. In particular, a target emotion within an emotional change should determine the magnitude of judgments of competence and warmth. As Table 1 reveals, this is indeed the case.

An (target emotion: anger, disgust, fear) analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted on the scores of competence and warmth as a preliminary analysis. It revealed an effect of the target emotion for ratings of competence (F(2, 196)=19.06, p< .0005, η2 = 163), as well as warmth (F(2, 196)= 110.06, p<.0005, η2=.529), indicating that the nature of the target emotion is of importance for social judgments (Anger: M=3.74 SD=.92), Expressions of which anger was the target emotion, resulted into the highest ratings of competence (M=3.74, SD=.92) compared to target emotions of disgust (M=3.11, SD=.84, p<.0005) or fear

(M=4.03, SD=.80, p=.005). Disgust as a target indicates to receive the lowest ratings in perceived competence, compared to the other target emotional expressions, which implies something about the nature of disgust that was not expected.. Fear as a target emotion

resulted into lower competence scores than anger, but higher than disgust (p<.05). For warmth, Anger was rated higher in warmth than disgust (p<. 0005), and lower in warmth than fear. Disgust as a target emotion resulted into the lowest ratings of warmth compared to other target emotional expressions. The target emotion of Fear received the highest ratings (M=4.03, SD=.80) compared to anger (M=3.36, SD=.88, p<.0005) and disgust (M=3.11, SD=.84, p<.0005). It can be said that the target emotion within an expression does exert fundamental influence of an eventual social judgment.

Table 1.

Mean ratings of respective Target Emotions.

Target Anger Target Disgust Target Fear

Competence 3.74 (.92) 3.26 (.91) 3.47 (.86)

Main analysis

Anchor emotion. The target emotion of an emotional change exerts an important influence on social judgment, but does the anchor emotion play an important role in this judgment as well? As can be seen from table 2, the answer is yes. A 2(Anchor Emotion) * 2(Gender of Expresser) * 2(Dependent Measures) analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted for every target emotion.

Table 2.

Mean ratings of competence and warmth for every emotional change. Anger to Disgust Disgust to Anger Anger to Fear Fear to Anger Disgust to Fear Fear to Disgust Competence 3.21(.99) 3.57 (1.0) 3.61 (.99) 3.91 (.10) 3.33 (.89) 3.31 (.95) Warmth 3.00 (.94) 3.25 (.92) 4.08 (.91) 3.46 (.98) 3.98 (.85) 3.22 (.91)

Anger. The anchor emotion revealed to be of significance for perceptions of competence (F(1,98)=18.25, p<.0005, _η2_{=.16) as well as warmth (F(1,98)=8.70, p<.005, η}2_=.08).

Disgust as an anchor emotion resulted into lower ratings of competence (M=3.57, SE=.10) than fear as an anchor emotion (M=3.92, SE=.10) M=-.348, SE=.08, p<.0005). This was not expected, as disgust is high in dominance and was more likely to be associated with high competence than fear. Furthermore, it supports the finding in the preliminary analysis, which suggests that disgust is an unfavorable emotional expression in social context. As expected, for warmth, disgust as an anchor emotion resulted into lower ratings

Disgust. For ratings of competence, no difference was found between either anger (M=3.21, SE=.10) or fear (M=3.31, SE=.10) as anchor emotions (M=.10, SE=.69, p=.17). For ratings of warmth, fear as an anchor emotion revealed higher ratings (M=3.22, SE=.09) than anger (M=3.01, SE=.09), M=.215, SE=.08, p<.05. This illustrates how a warm-related anchor emotion such as fear, can be beneficial to the eventual judgment made. Two

dominant emotions in an emotional change are naturally unfavorable for social judgment. Fear. The anchor emotion was of significance for competence, F(1,98)=13.82, p<.0005, η2_{=.12. Anger as an anchor emotion results into greater ratings of competence}

(M=3.61,SE=.10) than disgust (M=3.33, SE=.09) M=.281, SE=.08, p<.0005. This aligns with aforementioned findings that imply that disgust is a non-beneficial anchor or target emotion for competence as well as warmth. For perceptions of warmth however, no

difference was found between anger (M=4.08, SE=.09) or disgust (M=3.98, SE=.09) M=.10, SE=.08, p=.19. Overall, it could be stated that the nature of the target emotion is of fundamental influence for the judgments of competence and warmth that are made. Furthermore, particular judgments are also influenced by the anchor emotion within an emotional change. Regarding the emotions, anger is the most effective emotion to express if one wishes to be inferred as competent, whereas fear is the most effective to express in order to be judged as warm. Disgust appeared to be of negative influence in social

judgment, leading to the lowest ratings of competence and warmth.

Effects of the Gender of the Expresser. As previously mentioned, being a man or a woman could influence social judgments that are made based upon how someone expresses himself

or herself. The results revealed this idea is partially supported, as visible in Table 3 on the next page.

Table 3. Respective Mean Ratings of Male and Female targets Expressing Emotional Changes

Anger. For anger as a target emotion, results showed no effect of gender on perceptions of competence F(1.98)=2.33, p=.13, η2=.02. This contradicts our expectations, which entailed anger being beneficial to male actors for competence, but not for female ones. However, for perceptions of warmth, there is an effect of gender F(1,98)=22.24, p<.0005, η2=.19. Male expressers were rated higher in warmth (M=3.50, SE=1.0) than women (M=3.21, SE=.09) M=.29, SE=.06, p<.0005. The latter supports our hypothesis stating that women are more likely to be penalized in other domains of social judgment when expressing an a-typical emotion, which is anger in this case.

Disgust. For disgust as a target emotion, a significant effect of gender of expresser on perceptions of competence was found, F(1,98)=45.12, p<.0005, _η2_{=.32. Female expressers} receive higher ratings of competence (M=3.52, SE=.10) than male expressers (M=3.00, SE=.10) M=.520, SE=.09, p<.0005. The gender of the expresser revealed no significant

effect on perceptions of warmth. No difference between men (M=3.06, SE=.09) and women (M=3.16, SE=.09) was found M=.102, SE=.06, p=.11. These findings contradict our

hypothesis, as it was expected that women would be perceived as being less competent, expressing a highly dominant emotion such as disgust. Furthermore, a difference in warmth-ratings was expected due to the dominant characteristics of disgust.

Fear. When the target emotion was fear, men (M=3.41, SE=.10) were not perceived as more or less competent than women (M=3.53, SE=.09) M=.12, SE=.07, p=.08.

Furthermore, there was no difference in perceptions of warmth for male expressers (M=4.07, SE=.09) versus female expressers (M=4.00, SE=.09) M=.068, SE=.07, p=.32. Again this does not support our hypothesis, as it was expected that males would receive lower ratings of competence due to fear being a-typical for males to express, as it is a submissive emotion. Overall, it seems the gender of an actor can influence social judgment, as not every judgment appeared to be equal to male and female actors. However, theories regarding gender-stereotypical behavior have only been partially supported. Only for target anger, the penalizing effects for women in warmth have been revealed.

Discussion

The study showed that emotional change does affect social judgments of competence and warmth. The results of the conducted experiment are partially consistent with earlier findings as well as proposing new insights. Firstly, the preliminary analysis showed that the target emotion of an emotional change is of importance for ratings of competence and warmth, which supports our first hypothesis. Secondly, the main analysis found that the anchor

emotion is also influences perceptions of competence and warmth. Lastly, gender did in some cases affect social judgment, however not according to our hypothesis.

The Influence of the Target Emotion

That a target emotion is important for social judgments became apparent because the judgments corresponded the valence of the expressed target emotions. Anger as a target emotion led to the highest perceptions of competence, whereas fear lead to the highest perceptions of warmth. This supported previous research regarding social judgment and the nature of these emotional expressions. An important finding that did not necessarily

correspond with our expectations regarding competence was the prominent negative influence of disgust on social judgment. Disgust being a dominant emotion, it was indeed expected not to illicit high perceptions of warmth. However despite its dominant

characteristic, disgust was thoroughly disadvantuous to not only warmth, but also competence. The only implication that was available toward this finding was the

aforementioned study of Said and colleagues (2009), indicating that disgust is associated with low emotional stability and intelligence, amongst other things. The findings within the

present study uphold this implication about disgust. This could imply that expressing disgust conveys not only dominance, but also incapability and incompetence. Another implication of its negative effect on competence could be that disgust is perceived as dominant to such an extent, that favorable social judgments are not attributed anymore. Bear in mind that the origins of expressing disgust lay in disease avoidance. Expressing an emotion in social context that is usually a reaction to insanitary circumstance, could lead to very offensive interpretations for a perceiver (Hodson & Costello, 2007). This demonstrates that, despite their similarities in dominance, disgust and anger have very different influences on social judgment. Furthermore, it implies that judgments of competence are not mere products of perceptions of dominance, as the dominant expression of disgust failed to elevate perceptions of competence.

The Influence of the Anchor Emotion

The main analysis revealed that not only the target emotion of an emotional change is of influence for social judgment. The anchor emotion often plays an important part in this judgment. For instance, the finding where the emotional change of fear to disgust, lead to higher perceptions of warmth than anger changing to disgust, illustrates how the anchor emotion does affect the magnitude of eventual judgment made. In this case, the submissive anchor emotion of fear elevated the perception of warmth, despite the dominant target emotion. The effects of an emotional change on social judgment could be analogous to a mathematical equation, where submissive and dominant emotions are labeled as positive and negative numbers respectively, and the influence of the target emotion counts twice.

Differences in Social Judgment for Men and Women

The gender of the expresser did reveal to have influence on social judgment in some cases. We had hypothesized that men would be perceived as more competent than women, and women would be inferred warmer than men. However, little support was actually found.

Results were mixed, ranging from findings that uphold the framework and earlier findings, to completely contradicting them. This by no means makes these findings negligible. On one hand, frameworks incorporating gender-related social roles do not explain the lack of difference in social judgment. On the other hand the ‘lack of difference’ in social judgment implies equality in social judgment. Employing an interdisciplinary perspective could explain these findings. The equality in judgments may be a result of contemporary western society. Feminism is re-emerging as a widespread topic in the media and pop-culture, in which women as well as men activate gender equality (Snyder-Hall, 2010; Saad, 2014; Freeman, 2015; Pruis, 2015). In most parts of western society, equality in workplace and social roles is slowly emerging (Diekman & Eagly, 2000). Women are no longer exclusively inclined to domestic responsibilities, but also take on providing responsibilities. In other words, the social roles are gradually changing and perhaps the expectations and norms with respect to gender-appropriate emotional behaviour are reshaping alongside. Subsequently, the majority of our subject pool consists of young western, academic women who perhaps have developed novel views on social roles and therefore also on appropriateness of emotional behaviour. Perhaps the findings of this study reflect their vision on contemporary social roles.

Alternative Explanations and Limitations

Findings in this study that do not correspond with previous findings could be interpreted in the light of the paradigm that is used in this study. First of all, this paradigm was used in order to augment ecological validity. The dynamic feature of daily interactions is

incorporated in this paradigm that entails moving images and a variety of expressions. It could render findings that differ from research done on similar topics using static expressions. Furthermore, previous research on the combination of emotional changes used in this paper is, to my knowledge, scarce to non-existent. Using this advanced paradigm does not fully liberate the study of all limitations. The presentation of stimuli remains a visually isolated,

two dimensional fashion and emotional expressions are imitated by the actors, but not actually experienced (Krumhuber et al., 2013). These aspects instigate a limited ecological validity, but hopefully an improvement in comparison to static paradigms. Furthermore, a common limitation is the background of the participants, who are WEIRD, meaning they are from a western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic background (Henrich, Heine & Norenzayan, 2010). As previously mentioned, for this study it is of significance as social judgments are researched. Needless to say, social judgment and social background are inseparably interconnected.

Future Research

For future research, a suggestion is to provide a social context when investigating social judgment using this paradigm. A workplace-related context, could for instance be useful in order to align findings with the large body of research done on competence perceptions of males and females in organizational settings for instance. Context could complement insight on moderating or mediating variables in social judgment. Furthermore, providing a context could shed light on the exact reason why for instance the target emotion exerts the

fundamental influence on the eventual social judgment. Apart from speculative reasoning whilst forming the hypothesis, this study provides no insight on why the target emotion is of foremost importance. Numerous constructs could be of influence, such as situational or dispositional attribution, but perhaps it could be a result of a recency effect (Hogarth & Einhorn, 1992; Filipowicz et al., 2011). As for the gender effects that are found, it would be interesting to employ a subject-pool with two different age categories, to test whether their social judgments equal or differ. This could reveal if, and to which extent social norms differ for generations, and whether they indeed influence these social judgments.

Overall, this study implies that emotional changes do indeed influence judgments of competence and warmth in a different manner than static emotional expressions. It has

brought to light that a target emotion of an emotional change exerts the foremost influence on the social judgment made. Also, the anchor emotion is of great importance for social

judgment. As we often utilize our expressions for communicating intentions, as well as influencing others, insights on its dynamics are valuable. Although this study did not provide univocal implications on differing social judgments for women and men, perhaps the lack of difference is an implication of an optimistic prospect for Hillary Clintons 2016 campaign.

References

Algoe, S. B. , Buswell, B. N., & DeLamater, J. D. (2000). Gender and job status stereotypes as contextual cues for the interpretation of facial expression of emotion. Sex Roles, 42, 183-208.

Bloodhart, B. (2009) The Subtle Exploitation and Patronization of Women in Masculine Domains. Unpublished dissertation, Pensylvania State University, Pennsylvania, The United States of America

Brescoll, V. L., & Uhlmann, E. L. (2008). Can an angry woman get ahead? Status conferral, gender, and expression of emotion in the workplace. Psychological Science, 19, 268–275.

Carlsson, R. (2008) Implicit Stereotype Content: Mixed Stereotypes can be Measured with the

Implicit Association Test. Unpublished dissertation, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.

Carney, D.R., Hall, J.A., & Smith LeBeau, L. (2005). Beliefs about the nonverbal expression of social power. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 29, 105–123.

Chen, F. F., Jing, Y., & Lee, J. M. (2014). The looks of a leader: Competent and trustworthy, but not dominant. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 51, 27-33.

Côté, S., & Hideg, I. (2011). The ability to influence others via emotion displays: A novel dimension of emotional intelligence. Organizational Psychology Review, 1, 53-71.

Diekman, A., & Eagly, A. (2000). Stereotypes as dynamic constructs: Women and men of the past, present, and future. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 1171-1188.

Dwivedy, S. (2013, January 10) Why Hillary Clinton can’t talk like a man. The Huffington Post. Retreived from:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/supriya-dwivedi/hillary-clinton-new-york-post_b_2543658.html

Van Doorn, E.A., Van Kleef, G.A., & Van der Pligt, J. (2015) How emotional expressions shape prosocial behavior: Interpersonal effects of anger and disappointment on compliance with requests. Motivation and Emotion, 39, 128-141.

Dowd, M. (2008, January 9) Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House? The New York Times. Retreived from: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/opinion/08dowd

Eagly, A. H., & Karau, S. J. (2002). Role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders. Psychological Review, 109, 573–598.

Filipowicz, A., Barsade, S., & Melwani, S. (2011) Understanding emotional transitions: The interpersonal consequences of changing emotions in negotiations. Journal of

Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 541-556.

Fischer, A.H., Eagly, A.H., & Oosterwijk, S. (2013). The meaning of tears: Evaluating crying men and women in different social contexts. European Journal of Social Psychology, 43, 505–515.

Freeman, H. (2015, January 15). How Amy Poehler and Tina Fey made the Golden Globes the first feminist film awards ceremony. The Guardian. Retrieved from:

Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J. C., Glick, P., & Xu, J. (2002). A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and competition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 878-902.

Goldenberg, S. & Adams, R. (2008, January 10). The tears over coffee that turned over the poll. The Guardian. Retrieved from:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jan/10/hillaryclinton.uselections2008

GOP Strategy: Democrats too angry to succeed. (2006, August 24) NBC News. Retreived from: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/11240740/ns/politics/t/gop-strategy-democrats-too-angry-succeed/

Hareli, S., Shomrat, N. & Hess, U. (2009). Emotional versus neutral expressions and perceptions of social dominance and submissiveness, Emotion, 9, 378-384.

Heilman, M.E. & Okimoto, T. (2007). Why are women penalized for success at male tasks?: The implied communality deficit. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 81- 92.

Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The Weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 33, 61-83

Hess, U., Adams, R.B., Jr., & Kleck, R.E. (2005). Who may frown and who should smile? Dominance, affiliation, and the display of happiness and anger. Cognition & Emotion, 19, 515-536.

Hodson, K., & Costello, G., (2007) Interpersonal disgust, ideological orientations, and dehumanization as predictors of intergroup attitudes. Psychological Science, 8, 691-698.

adjustment model. Cognitive Psychology, 24, 1-55

Hutcherson, C.A., & Gross, J.J. (2011). The moral emotions: a social functionalist account of anger, disgust, and contempt. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 719-737.

Judd C. M., James-Hawkins, L., Yzerbyt, V., Kashima, Y., (2005) Fundamental dimensions of social judgment: understanding the relations between judgments of competence and warmth. Journal of personality and social psychology, 89, 299-913.

Van Kleef, G. A., De Dreu, C. K. W.,& Manstead, A. S. R. (2004). The interpersonal effects of anger and happiness in negotiations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86, 57-76.

Van Kleef, G. A., Van Doorn, E. A., Heerdink, M. W., & Koning, L. F. (2011). Emotion is for influence. European Review of Social Psychology, 22, 114-163.

Knutson, B. (1996). Facial expressions of emotion influence interpersonal trait inferences. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 20, 165-182.

Krumhuber, E., Kappas, A. & Manstead, A. S. R. (2013). Effects of dynamic aspects of facial expressions: A review. Emotion Review , 5, 41-45.

Langner, O., Dotsch, R., Bijlstra, G., Wigboldus, D.H.J., Hawk, S.T., & van Knippenberg, A. (2010). Presentation and validation of the Radboud Faces Database. Cognition & Emotion, 24, 1377—1388.

Lewis, K. M. (2000). When leaders display emotion: How followers respond to negative emotional expression of male and female leaders. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 21, 221–234.

Mechanism, Psychological Bulletin, 135, 303-21.

Oosterhof, N. N., & Todorov, A. (2008). The functional basis of face evaluation.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 105, 11087-11092.

Plant, E. A., Hyde, J. S., Keltner, D., & Devine, P. G. (2000). The gender stereotyping of emotion. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 24, 81-92.

Pruis, M. (2015, February 18) Feminisme is weer cool. De Groene Amsterdammer. Retrieved from: https://www.groene.nl/artikel/who-s-bad

Rudman, L. A., & Phelan, J. E. (2008). Backlash effects for disconfirming gender stereotypes in organizations. Research in organizational behavior, 4, 61–79.

Saad, N. (2014, September 22) Emma Watson speaks at U.N., invites men to join feminism conversation. LA Times. Retrieved from:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/gossip/la-et-mg-emma-watson-feminism-un-heforshe-campaign-20140922-story.html

Schnall, S., Haidt, J., Clore, G., & Jordan, A. (2008). Disgust as embodied moral judgment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1096-1109.

Snyder-Hall, R.,C. (2010) Third-wave feminism and the defense of “choice”. Perspectives on Politics, 8, 255–261.

Tiedens, L. Z. (2001). Anger and advancement versus sadness and subjugation: The effect of negative emotion expressions on social status conferral. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 86–94.

competence from faces predict election outcomes. Science, 308, 1623–1626.

Weber, P. (2014, April 23) The Daily Show Tackles Political Sexism and the Hillary Clinton Question. The Week. Retrieved from: