Abstract
Facial expression stereotypes can affect the perception of other people’s facial expressions. This study examined facial expression stereotypes of poor and rich adults and children. Experiment 1 found that the adult participants associated rich adults with positive emotions (i.e., happiness) and poor adults with negative emotions (i.e., sadness). In Experiments 2–4, adult participants still thought that rich 4-, 6-, and 10-year-old children would show positive facial expressions (happiness) but did not think that poor 4-, 6-, and 10-year-old children would show negative emotions (sadness). These finding have implications concerning how adults communicate with poor and rich adults and children.
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Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 31760287, 31400902, and 31571147), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. GK202103134).
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This study was reviewed and approved by the committee for the protection of participants at Northwest Normal University, School of Psychology Ethics Committee. Informed consent was obtained from each participant before the experiment, according to the established guidelines of the committee.
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Handling editor: Derya Güngör De Bruyn (KU Leuven); Reviewers: The handling editor and a second researcher who prefers to remain anonymous.
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Zhang, X., Yan, R., Sun, S. et al. Facial expression stereotypes of rich and poor adults and children. Cogn Process 22, 649–657 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-021-01040-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-021-01040-7