Are Women Always More Interpersonally Sensitive Than Men? Impact of Goals and Content Domain

Abstract

Two studies examined motivation and content domain as possible influences on sex differences in interpersonal sensitivity. Although much research has found women to excel on tasks measuring interpersonal sensitivity, most of the tasks have measured accuracy in female-relevant domains such as emotion. The present studies measured interpersonal sensitivity, defined as accurate recall of another person, for both female-relevant and male-relevant content domains and also included motivational manipulations intended to influence men and women differently. Study 1 measured accuracy of recalling information in a written vignette about a person, and Study 2 measured accuracy of recalling details about an interaction partner. Both studies supported hypotheses about domain specificity and gender-relevant motivation. However, even for male-stereotypic content and for tasks framed to favor men's motivation to perform well, men's accuracy never exceeded women's.

Perceiving Others’ Feelings

“…Yet the gender of the perceiver did matter: men performed significantly worse on the empathic accuracy task than women. Although this finding is consistent with some past research that has found gender differences in empathic accuracy (Galinsky et al, 2006, Study 3;Hall, 1978), evidence suggests that such differences may not necessarily be hard-wired, but rather can be attributed to more fluid contextual and individual difference variables, such as the motivation to be empathic (Hall & Mast, 2008;Ickes, Gesn, & Graham, 2000;Klein & Hodges, 2001). Consistent with this view, we found that the gender difference was statistically mediated by the two individual difference predictors of empathy:…”

Life Satisfaction and Engagement in Elementary and Primary Educators: Differences in Emotional Intelligence and Gender // Bienestar personal y laboral en el profesorado de Infantil y Primaria: diferencias en función de su inteligencia emocional y del géne

“…Traditionally, women are considered to be more emotional, to experience and express their emotional states more intensely (Brody & Hall, 1993), to report greater emotional awareness (Feldman-Barrett, Lane, Sechrest, & Schwartz, 2000), to perform better on emotion perception tasks (McClure, 2000;Montagne, Kessels, Frigerio, de Haan, & Perrett, 2005), to show a greater sensibility to relationships and interpersonal regulation (Hall & Mast, 2008), and to inform a greater empathetic disposition than men (Mestre, Samper, Frías, & Tur, 2009). These findings have made it evident that women usually score higher than men in the affective sphere.…”

“…Tradicionalmente las mujeres son consideradas más emocionales, experimentan y expresan sus estados anímicos más intensamente (Brody y Hall, 1993), informan de mayor conciencia emocional (Feldman-Barrett, Lane, Sechrest, y Schwartz, 2000), rinden mejor en tareas de percepción de emociones (McClure, 2000;Montagne, Kessels, Frigerio, de Haan, y Perrett, 2005), muestran una mayor sensibilidad relacional y regulación interpersonal (Hall y Mast, 2008) así como una mayor disposición empá-tica que los varones (Mestre, Samper, Frías, y Tur, 2009). Estos hallazgos ponen de manifiesto que en el terreno afectivo las mujeres suelen puntuar más alto que los hombres en diferentes ámbitos, por lo que, sería lógico pensar que en las habilidades emocionales integradas en el concepto de IE, las mujeres deberían mostrar niveles más elevados que los hombres, lo cual aportaría evidencias sobre la validez de constructo del concepto (Fernán-dez-Berrocal, Cabello, Castillo, y Extremera, 2012).…”

Interpersonal behaviour and social perception in a hierarchy: The interpersonal power and behaviour model

“…Although there is evidence of women outperforming men in interpersonal accuracy tasks (Hall, 1984(Hall, , 2006Hall & Schmid Mast, 2008;McClure, 2000), women do not seem to have an advantage in judging dominance or power in others as compared to men (Schmid Mast & Hall, 2004b;. Perhaps men have greater accuracy because power is a male-typical issue, and men might be more expert in power issues than women because they are more competitive (Bjorkqvist, Lagerspetz, & Kaukiainen, 1992;Eagly, Karau, Miner, & Johnson, 1994), more easily form hierarchies when they first meet (Schmid Mast, 2001, 2002b, and are more motivated to take on the leadership role (Eagly et al, 1994).…”

“…Or, women may be particularly bad at judging power (as compared to judging emotions, in which they do a better job than men) because they are comparatively non-experts, or any combination of the above. There is some evidence to suggest that men's accuracy was increased when the situation was related to power than if the situation was not (i.e., they had to remember the opponent's performance in a competitive task as compared to a cooperative task; Hall & Schmid Mast, 2008).…”