Perceived negative emotion in neutral faces: Gender-dependent effects on attractiveness and threat

Humans automatically form first impressions based on others' appearance, including their perceived emotional state. When others' facial expressions are neutral, or "resting," people nevertheless infer emotion, which they overgeneralize to trait judgments such as attractiveness and threat. I argue that perceived resting negative emotion (PRNE) predicts attractiveness and threat and that these effects are moderated by target gender, such that PRNE more strongly predicts attractiveness for women and threat for men. Analysis of 597 coded faces supports these predictions. Furthermore, moderated mediation analysis suggests that threat partly explains the gender moderation of PRNE's effect on attractiveness, such that threat negatively predicts attractiveness more strongly for women. These findings highlight the moderating role of target gender in emotional-face overgeneralization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).