Facial age cues and emotional expression interact asymmetrically: age cues moderate emotion categorisation

ABSTRACT

Facial attributes such as race, sex, and age can interact with emotional expressions; however, only a couple of studies have investigated the nature of the interaction between facial age cues and emotional expressions and these have produced inconsistent results. Additionally, these studies have not addressed the mechanism/s driving the influence of facial age cues on emotional expression or vice versa. In the current study, participants categorised young and older adult faces expressing happiness and anger (Experiment 1) or sadness (Experiment 2) by their age and their emotional expression. Age cues moderated categorisation of happiness vs. anger and sadness in the absence of an influence of emotional expression on age categorisation times. This asymmetrical interaction suggests that facial age cues are obligatorily processed prior to emotional expressions. Finding a categorisation advantage for happiness expressed on young faces relative to both anger and sadness which are negative in valence but different in their congruence with old age stereotypes or structural overlap with age cues suggests that the observed influence of facial age cues on emotion perception is due to the congruence between relatively positive evaluations of young faces and happy expressions.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion recognition
• emotional expression
• face perception
• age
• person construal

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Task sequence influenced performance in the emotion task as indicated by a Task sequence × Emotion interaction, F(1, 30) = 8.54, p = .007, ${\eta }_{\mathrm{p}}^2=.22$, as well as a marginally significant Task sequence × Age × Emotion interaction, F(1, 30) = 3.55, p = .069, ${\eta }_{\mathrm{p}}^2=.11$. This marginal three-way interaction was followed up by looking at the pattern of results separately for the two task sequences. Those who completed the emotion categorisation task first, were significantly faster to categorise expression on young than older adult faces, F(1, 15) = 22.55, p < .001, ${\eta }_{\mathrm{p}}^2=.60$. The Age × Emotion interaction was also significant, F(1, 15) = 6.81, p = .020, ${\eta }_{\mathrm{p}}^2=.31$, indicating faster recognition of happiness on young than on older adult faces, t(15) = 3.76, p = .002, but no difference in the speed of recognising anger as a function of the age of the face, t(15) = 0.19, p = .853. Those who completed the age categorisation task first were significantly faster to categorise happiness than anger regardless of the age of the face, F(1, 15) = 10.02, p = .006, ${\eta }_{\mathrm{p}}^2=.40$, and were significantly faster to categorise expressions displayed by young adults than older adults, F(1, 15) = 38.70, p < .001, ${\eta }_{\mathrm{p}}^2=.72$. There was, however, no significant interaction of face age and emotional expression, F(1, 15) = 0.77, p = .395, ${\eta }_{\mathrm{p}}^2=.05$.

2. Previous research has demonstrated that the number of stimuli used in a task can influence the interaction between emotional expression and sex cues (Lipp, Karnadewi, et al., 2015). To determine whether stimulus set size influenced the nature of the Age × Emotion interaction, 61 participants (15 males, M = 24.43, SD = 4.89) took part in a replication of Experiment 1; however only two young and two older adult faces were used and participants saw only one older adult and one young adult face in each task. As in Experiment 1, participants were, faster to categorise emotional expressions on young than older adult faces, F(1, 60) = 12.25, p = .001, ${\eta }_{\mathrm{p}}^2=.17$. There was, overall, no difference in categorisation times for happy and angry expressions, F(1, 60) = 0.01, p = .943, ${\eta }_{\mathrm{p}}^2<.01$. However, there was an Age × Emotion interaction, F(1, 60) = 4.39, p = .040, ${\eta }_{\mathrm{p}}^2=.07$. Participants were significantly faster to categorise happiness on young (M = 548.68, SD = 87.30) than older adult faces (M = 580.78, SD = 121.62), t(60) = 4.65, p < .001, but the age of the face did not affect categorisation of anger, t(60) = 1.69, p = .097 (young adult M = 558.58, SD = 93.56, older adult M = 570.22, SD = 103.73). In the age categorisation task, data from one participant were not included in the analysis as their error rate approached chance. Participants were significantly faster to categorise old (M = 466.32, SD = 69.50) than young faces (M = 480.23, SD = 88.20), F(1, 59) = 7.92, p = .007, ${\eta }_{\mathrm{p}}^2=.12$. The main effect of emotion as well as the Age × Emotion interaction were not significant, Fs < 1.60, ps > .211.

Additional information

Funding

This research was partly supported by an Australia Postgraduate Award to BMC and Australian Research Council Discovery Projects (project numbers DP110100460 and DP150101540) awarded to OVL.