Male and Female Viewers’ perception of the degree of emotion expressed via body Language and prosody in two film adaptations of Jane Eyre

Abstract

Humans use different cues, such as prosody and body language, to express different affective states. Previous research has been devoted to analysing the relationship between these two cues and their interaction with gender-related differences. Unlike previous studies, this current study focused on the interaction between perception of emotions expressed via prosody and gender-related differences as well as perception of emotion expressed via body language and gender-related differences. This current study consisted of two experiments. The first experiment investigated the effect of gender on the perception of the degree of emotion expressed via body language and via prosody. The second experiment investigated the effect of gender on the ability to recognise the correct emotion expressed via body language and via prosody. Two film adaptations of the famous novel Jane Eyre were used for this experiment as this study was part of a larger project on the use of prosody and body language in film adaptations of Jane Eyre. The stimuli were presented to the viewers in two ways, namely audio-only and image-only. The results indicate a significant effect of gender on the ability to recognise the correct emotion from prosody, but no significant effect of gender on the ability to recognise the correct emotion from body language. Furthermore, there was no significant effect of gender on the perception of the degree of emotion expressed through body language or through prosody.