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Conscious and Non-conscious Representations of Emotional Faces in Asperger's Syndrome
Published on: July 31, 2016
Emotional awareness, gender, and suspiciousness
M Tyler Boden1, Howard Berenbaum
1University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA.
Cognition & Emotion
|December 29, 2009
Summary
Men with lower emotional awareness (EA) reported more suspiciousness. Women consistently showed high EA, unaffected by the study's conditions, unlike men.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Social Psychology
- Cognitive Psychology
Background:
- Emotional awareness (EA) is crucial for understanding social interactions.
- Gender differences in emotional processing and social cognition are well-documented.
- The link between emotional awareness and suspiciousness requires further investigation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the causal relationship between emotional awareness and suspiciousness.
- To examine whether gender moderates the effect of emotional awareness on suspiciousness.
- To explore the impact of manipulating emotional awareness on subsequent social cognition.
Main Methods:
- Induction of an unpleasant mood.
- Manipulation of emotional awareness (EA) through tailored story reading (high vs. low EA conditions).
- Measurement of suspiciousness and self-reported emotional awareness in independent samples.
Main Results:
- A significant interaction effect between EA condition and gender on suspiciousness and EA.
- Men in the low EA condition reported higher suspiciousness and lower EA than men in the high EA condition.
- Women exhibited consistently high EA, irrespective of the EA manipulation, and their suspiciousness levels remained unaffected.
Conclusions:
- Emotional awareness causally influences suspiciousness in men.
- Gender significantly moderates the relationship between emotional awareness and suspiciousness.
- Targeted interventions to enhance emotional awareness may reduce suspiciousness, particularly in men.
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