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Gender Differences in Impression Formation
Article · March 2010
Source: DOAJ

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Bogdana Huma
Loughborough University
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JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE RESEARCH IN
ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY
Copyright © The Author(s), 2010
Volume 1(1): 57-72
ISSN 2068 – 0317
http://compaso
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It is based on secondary analysis of the data gathered in two previous experiments with
similar conditions
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The current analysis was conducted on 86 participants, 47 males and 39 females
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Their task consisted of watching a 14 seconds long video of a female confederate
reading a neutral text and then evaluating her using a semantic differential with four dimensions:
sociability, ethics, power and activity
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More precisely, the
majority of the studies undertaken in this area compare men and women’s accuracy scores of facial
expressions decoding, yielding mostly significant differences, with women achieving higher
accuracy
...
However, the current experiment
failed to reveal any differences between men’s and women’s evaluations
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The results are consistent with a small percentage of the studies
conducted on gender differences in social perception and allow multiple interpretations
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, Dept
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Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology, Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 2010

Introduction
It is a common sociological practice to resort to gender differences when trying to
explain social phenomena
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Therefore, even if the
assertion that men are from Mars and women are from Venus is rather farfetched, not
admitting that gender differences exist and that they account for at least a small part of
the individual behavior variance would be a mistake
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Until now, many studies have addressed this issue, most of them yielding
similar results, which revealed significant differences between the two sexes
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Moreover, it must be mentioned that the largest part of
the studies in this area addressed the issue of gender differences in impression accuracy
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Therefore, comparing men and

with distinguishing all facial expressions, males experienced difficulties with photographs
depicting anger and fear
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al
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Their study employed two measures of facial expression decoding: accuracy
and sensitivity
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Thus, they could record the participants’ accuracy, as well as
their sensitivity (how soon they were able to correctly recognize the depicted emotion)
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This study offers valuable insight

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Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology, Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 2010

into the processes underlying the decoding of facial expressions, suggesting that there
may be quantitative, rather than qualitative differences between men and women
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Their experiments revealed that, manipulating the subjects’
motivation influenced their ability to accurately assess the target person
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When financial stimulation was included, the differences in
accuracy disappeared
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Their
results are somewhat divergent, but there are also studies which yielded similar
conclusions
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Their results showed no significant discrepancy between men and
women’s rating consistencies
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This outcome is
contradicted by a study conducted by Johnson, Nagasawa and Peters (1977) who
concluded that the male and female subjects employed in their experiment yielded
similar evaluations of the target persons’ sociability
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Carney, Colvin and Hall (2007) conducted a similar study, employing the Big Five
personality questionnaire in assessing first impression accuracy
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In contrast, Lippa
and Dietz (2000) observed that men and women employed in a similar task – the
evaluation of a target person using the Big Five structure – rendered similar assessments
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Furthermore, Ambady, Hallahan and Rosenthal
(1995) examined the role of gender, among other aspects, in social perception accuracy
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Other variables bore an influence on perception fidelity, as well
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Sociable and self-monitoring women were more accurate in
evaluating emotional stability
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Concluding, although
female subjects had, overall, a higher fidelity rate, participants who were more accurate,
either male or female, exhibited similar personality traits
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Lippa and Dietz (2000) concluded that the intelligence and
openness of the observer correlated with higher accuracy scores
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It was hypothesized that subjects with higher femininity scores
would be better judges
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Moreover, men with high androginy and women with high sextyping scores proved to be better judges of video stimuli
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In a study conducted by Vogt and Colvin (2003) subjects were asked to rate the
personality of a target person shown in a 12 min video
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Subjects also filled in a personality questionnaire which, among others assessed
their communion, which was defined as ‘the need to become one with the group of
others’ (Bakan apud Vogt and Colvin, 2003, 269)
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However, when
partialling out gender, differences in accuracy scores due to communion still remained
significant
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Murphy, Hall and Colvin (2003) noticed that female participants
were better judges only when the target person was presented by means of a video
sequence with sound
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Moreover, the meta-analysis conducted by Hall (1978) based
on 75 studies on the topic of nonverbal decoding skills rendered similar results
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Differences in accuracy between men and women were more likely to occur
when experiments employed stimuli with video and audio information
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Additionally, since
gender cannot be experimentally manipulated, it is possible that other variables which
covariate with sex underlie differences in accuracy, thus yielding a spurious correlation
...

An alternative explanation for differences in social perception accuracy is offered
by Hoffman (1977)
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Therefore, it is in their nature to put
themselves in somebody else’s place, thus being able to imagine what they feel or think
...

Furthermore, Garner and Estep (2002) drew attention to the fact that other variables like
social context and age must be taken into consideration
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McClure’s (2000) meta-analysis of studies regarding facial expression processing
aimed to reveal the causes underlying females’ higher accuracy rates
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The
two main theoretical frameworks explaining gender differences discussed in the article
were: the neurobehavioral and the social constructivist model
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By contrast, the social constructivist approach suggests that
sex differences occur due to dissimilarities in emotion socialization
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Considering the studies undertaken on this topic, an integrated model
might be appropriate for explaining most of their results
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However, since they remain constant over time, and do not decrease with age,
the assumptions of the social constructivism cannot be ruled out
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al
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They were told that the
actor would either be shy or outgoing
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Finally they
were asked to rate the actor on several dimensions and to express their liking towards
him or her
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Impression formation was influenced by the
targets’ observed behavior, whereas liking ratings were based on expectancies
generated by initial information
...
Therefore,
processes underlying social perception are to be influenced by own-sex schemes, which
consist of behavior prescriptions for the observers, as well as by superordinate schemes,
which contain information about what activities and characteristics are gender specific
and thus to be expected from the target person (Martin and Dinella, 2002)
...
However, their
results were not always convergent, permitting alternative, if not contradicting
explanations
...

The current study intends to reveal discrepancies in the first impression men and
women form of a confederate videotaped while reading a neutral text
...

Method
Participants
Participants were 86 students, 47 males and 39 females, with ages ranging from 15 to 32,
forming two groups: high school students, with ages between 15 and 19, and university
students, with ages between 21 and 32
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The 37 graduate students were enrolled in a master’s program within the Faculty of
Sociology and Social Work of the Bucharest University
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Table 1 Sample structure
Male
Female
High school
43
6
Univer
internal consistency of the four scales (above 0
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This theoretical framework
suggests that the characteristics of a target person perceived by an observer yield
certain affordances meaning that they are relevant for their interaction
...
Moreover, the newly emerged scales, sociability and morality,
couldn’t have been encountered in Osgood’s initial structure, since it was designed for
non-living objects and concepts
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The following arguments are supporting this choice: Whereas, until now, the semantic
differential was employed in the measurement of objects, abstract concepts or people, in
this study, the stimulus consists of a real person, presented to the participants by means
of a short movie
...
Moreover,
since this experiment has an exploratory goal, it was considered better for the subjects
to have more freedom in forming an impression
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The first impression
is both subjective and semi-conscientious, which makes it difficult to evaluate
...

Design
This study aimed to reveal the effect of gender, the independent variable, on the first
impression, the dependent variable
...
Therefore, the effect of age and education
were also taken into account when conducting the statistical analysis
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Nonetheless, it is
expected that this minor discrepancies will not significantly influence the outcome of the
experiment
...
Thus, participants were either told they were
attending an experiment on nonverbal communication or an experiment which aimed to
reveal the influence of information presentation on impression formation
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Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology, Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 2010

Procedure
Data collection sessions were conducted on the 18th, 20th of November and the 4th of
December 2008, for the high school group and on the 20th of November and the 4th of
December 2009 for the university students
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This location was chosen due to its technological facilities (TV set and
DVD-player)

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