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Interspecies transmission of emotional information via chemosignals: From humans to dogs (canis lupus familiaris)

Publication . D’Aniello, Biagio; Semin, Gün R.; Alterisio, Alessandra; Aria, Massimo; Scandurra, Anna

We report a study examining interspecies emotion transfer via body odors (chemosignals). Do human body odors (chemosignals) produced under emotional conditions of happiness and fear provide information that is detectable by pet dogs (Labrador and Golden retrievers)? The odor samples were collected from the axilla of male donors not involved in the main experiment. The experimental setup involved the co-presence of the dog's owner, a stranger and the odor dispenser in a space where the dogs could move freely. There were three odor conditions [fear, happiness, and control (no sweat)] to which the dogs were assigned randomly. The dependent variables were the relevant behaviors of the dogs (e.g., approaching, interacting and gazing) directed to the three targets (owner, stranger, sweat dispenser) aside from the dogs' stress and heart rate indicators. The results indicated with high accuracy that the dogs manifested the predicted behaviors in the three conditions. There were fewer and shorter owner directed behaviors and more stranger directed behaviors when they were in the "happy odor condition" compared to the fear odor and control conditions. In the fear odor condition, they displayed more stressful behaviors. The heart rate data in the control and happy conditions were significantly lower than in the fear condition. Our findings suggest that interspecies emotional communication is facilitated by chemosignals.

2017Journal article

Restricted access

Gender is not simply a matter of black and white, or is it?

Publication . Semin, Gün R.; Palma, A. T.; Acarturk, Cengiz; Dziuba, Aleksandra

Based on research in physical anthropology, we argue that brightness marks the abstract category of gender, with light colours marking the female gender and dark colours marking the male gender. In a set of three experiments, we examine this hypothesis, first in a speeded gender classification experiment with male and female names presented in black and white. As expected, male names in black and female names in white are classified faster than the reverse gender-colour combinations. The second experiment relies on a gender classification task involving the disambiguation of very briefly appearing non-descript stimuli in the form of black and white 'blobs'. The former are classified predominantly as male and the latter as female names. Finally, the processes driving light and dark object choices for males and females are examined by tracking the number of fixations and their duration in an eye-tracking experiment. The results reveal that when choosing for a male target, participants look longer and make more fixations on dark objects, and the same for light objects when choosing for a female target. The implications of these findings, which repeatedly reveal the same data patterns across experiments with Dutch, Portuguese and Turkish samples for the abstract category of gender, are discussed. The discussion attempts to enlarge the subject beyond mainstream models of embodied grounding.This article is part of the theme issue 'Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use and representation in the brain'.

2018-06Journal article

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Social inferences from faces as a function of the left-to-right movement continuum

Publication . Mendonça, Rita; Garrido, Margarida Vaz; Semin, Gün R.

We examined whether reading and writing habits known to drive agency perception also shape the attribution of other agency-related traits, particularly for faces oriented congruently with script direction (i.e., left-to-right). Participants rated front-oriented, left-oriented and right-oriented faces on 14 dimensions. These ratings were first reduced to two dimensions, which were further confirmed with a new sample: power and social-warmth. Both dimensions were systematically affected by head orientation. Right-oriented faces generated a stronger endorsement of the power dimension (e.g., agency, dominance), and, to a lesser extent, of the social-warmth dimension, relative to the left and frontal-oriented faces. A further interaction between the head orientation of the faces and their gender revealed that front-facing females, relative to front-facing males, were attributed higher social-warmth scores, or communal traits (e.g., valence, warmth). These results carry implications for the representation of people in space particularly in marketing and political contexts. Face stimuli and respective norming data are available at www.osf.io/v5jpd.

2020Journal article

Open access

The “ins” and “outs” of person perception: The influence of consonant wanderings in judgments of warmth and competence

Publication . Garrido, Margarida; Godinho, Sandra; Semin, Gün R.

In five studies (N=638), we extended the in-out effect to person perception, examining the influence of oral approach-avoidance movements activated by word articulation, on preference, sociability and competence judgments of mock-usernames. Users with inward, in contrast to outward-usernames, were always preferred and judged as warmer. However, they were judged as equally competent. The differential impact of the in-out effect in the core dimensions of social perception suggests that the phenomenon relies on the affective mechanism of approach-avoidance that is only pertinent to judgments related to the warmth dimension. The present research provides further support for the link between the activation of oral muscles and impression formation, emphasizing the relevance of the in-out effect for the person perception domain and embodied social cognition.

2019Journal article

Restricted access

When we don’t know what we know – Sex and skin color

Publication . Carrito, Mariana L.; Semin, Gün R.

In 3 experiments, we examine how the abstract category of gender, grounded by the lightness-darkness dimension, derived from the universal sexual dimorphism of skin color, is represented and how such representations lead to visual accentuation processes, i.e. polarization of differences between male and female faces. In the first two experiments, we show that irrespective of whether grayscale male and female faces are presented sequentially or jointly, female faces are judged to be lighter than male faces when participants are asked to indicate the level of lightness of the faces. This pattern was found for the majority of participants who explicitly stated that men and women do not differ in skin color. The third experiment was designed to examine the cognitive consequences of what people implicitly 'know' with a perceptual accentuation study. Participants were provided with male and female faces of equal skin color. Subsequently, in a memory recall task, they were asked to select, from a row of several faces varying in skin color, the original face. They chose, as predicted, lighter versions of faces for females compared to the male faces. This research reveals that the evolutionarily based sexual dimorphism in skin color implicitly grounds gender categories and shapes implicit visual accentuation processes.

2019Journal article

Restricted access