According to recent research from the University of Essex, when people are furious, they are more likely to be classified as male, and when they are joyful, they are more likely to be judged as female.
Dr Sebastian Korb's research discovered that how we interpret an emotional expression on a face or voice is highly influenced by our perception of sex, and vice versa. According to a study published in the journal Emotion, both men and women make the same mistakes subconsciously.
Dr Korb of the Department of Psychology, University of Essex, thinks that the study will be expanded and that it will help us become more aware of our prejudices. He said: "This study shows how important it is not to rely too much on your first impressions, as they can easily be wrong. Next time you find yourself attributing happiness or sadness to a woman be aware of your bias and possible misinterpretation. Interestingly, there wasn't a gender divide in the way the perceived sex of a face affected emotional judgements -- but women were slightly more sensitive to subtle changes in emotion overall."
The study used 121 avatar faces and 121 human voices that were made by varying the emotional expression from pleased to angry and the sex from male to female on a sliding scale. In three experiments, a total of 256 people were given mock-ups or heard voices and asked to judge emotions and whether someone was male or female.
When the extent of the effects were compared, it was discovered that emotion influenced sex perception more than the other way around for both faces and voices. This is assumed to be related to an unconscious stimulation of the amygdala, the brain's main emotion centre. This almond-shaped cluster of neurons deep in the brain allows us to recognise and react quickly to threats like an angry attacker, but it is not involved in detecting a person's sex.
It's also thought that being predisposed to see males as hostile has evolved as a means of preparing for a fight or flight response.