Master of Arts in Psychology, Cleveland State University, 2023, College of Sciences and Health Professions

The process of perceiving and expressing emotion is multifaceted and governed by a plethora of variables. Culture and group membership have been shown to influence how emotions are displayed and interpreted. Individuals demonstrate inaccurate emoting perception to members of an out-group. Furthermore, perceiving emotions depends on contextual cues, preconceived biases, and familiarity. Cultural cues have an embedded meaning that guide emotional inferences. For the present study, a sample of 40 Muslim female participants were shown pictures of veiled female faces. The type of veil was be manipulated using an Islamic niqab or simply a scarf and a winter cap. Participants were asked to identify the emotion being displayed (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, or neutral) within the veiled faces whereby only the eye region of each face will be visible. Overall, participants were able to identify happy and angry faces more accurately compared to neutral, sad and fear. Participants showed no differentiation in perceiving the covered faces between the two head covering conditions This suggests that cultural familiarity with face processing in the presence of head coverings may account for this absence of distinction.

Committee: Eric Allard (Committee Chair); Kenneth Vail (Committee Member); Shereen Naser (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology