Gender differences: emotions and moods

Many believe women are more emotional than men. Is there any truth to this? Evidence confirms that women are more emotionally expressive than men. Women experience emotions more intensely, they tend to 'hold on to' emotions longer than do men, and they display more frequent expressions of both positive and negative emotions, except anger. Evidence from a study of participants from 37 different nations found that men consistently report higher levels of powerful emotions, such as anger, whereas women report more powerless emotions, such as sadness and fear. Thus, there are some gender differences in the experience and expression of emotions. People also tend to attribute men and women's emotions in ways that might be based on stereotypes of what typical emotional reactions are. One study showed that experimental participants who read about emotional expressions interpreted women's reactions as being dispositional (related to personality), whereas men's reactions were interpreted as being due to the situation around them. For example, a picture of a sad woman led observers to believe she was acting consistently with an emotional personality type, whereas a picture of a sad man was more likely to be attributed to his having a bad day. Another study showed that participants were faster at detecting angry expressions on male faces and happy expressions on female faces; neutral faces in men were more likely to be interpreted as angry and neutral faces in women were more likely to be interpreted as happy.