Does parenting affect recognition of emotions conveyed by children?

The present work investigates those factors affecting the way people recognize face, gestures, and more specifically emotional expressions. To this aim, a study is proposed, in which were involved sixty participants split in two groups (parents and childless subjects). Participants were required to label pictures of male and female children belonging to different ethnicity displaying static expressions of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, and neutrality. Results showed that the gender and the ethnicity of the stimulus clearly affected results; moreover, differences were observed between parents and childless participants concerning percentages of emotions recognition accuracy.