Are women the more empathetic gender? The effects of gender role expectations

Abstract

The present research aimed to extend the state of knowledge regarding the relationship between self-perceived empathy and traditional gender roles and placed particular focus on the contextual conditions under which gender differences in empathy are present, can be created, or eliminated. Across two studies, women rated themselves higher in empathy than men in all experimental conditions, whereas an objective female superiority in emotion recognition was only evident in one condition. In Study 1 (n = 736), using the term ‘social-analytic capacity’ instead of ‘empathic capacity’ increased gender differences in self-reported empathy and resulted in women performing better in the Eyes-test than men. In a neutral task (verbal intelligence), gender differences (in this case, a male superiority), were only found when participants believed that this task had an association with empathy. In Study 2 (n = 701), gender differences in self-reported empathic capacity, but not in performance in emotion recognition, increased when motivation for empathy was raised. Further, gender-role orientation mediated the association between gender and self-reported empathic capacity, whereas it did not account for the association between gender and emotion recognition. Overall, the present studies provide strong support for the idea that empathy is influenced by contextual factors and can be systematically biased by gender roles and stereotypical beliefs.

Perspective-Taking in Virtual Reality and Reduction of Biases against Minorities

“…Future studies can further investigate it. Even though past studies found that women tend to have higher empathy than men [76,77], the current finding did not show such a trend. This may be due to other factors, such as the context and gender role expectations [76], rather than simply self-reported biological sex in the questionnaire.…”

“…Even though past studies found that women tend to have higher empathy than men [76,77], the current finding did not show such a trend. This may be due to other factors, such as the context and gender role expectations [76], rather than simply self-reported biological sex in the questionnaire. A meta-review on empathy and sex differences [78] has also identified a few important factors that future studies can consider for further investigation of sex differences and empathy.…”

An investigation of children's empathic dispositions and behaviours across seven countries

“…Evolutionary accounts of gender-related differences in empathy (Christov-Moore et al, 2014) posit that empathic concern may be especially advantageous for females to protect and nurture children (Decety & Svetlova, 2012). In contrast, adult studies suggest that gender differences in empathy emerge from socialized beliefs about gender roles, where empathy is viewed as a typically feminine trait (Löffler & Greitemeyer, 2021). Although our data cannot address this debate, we do find gender differences present in aspects of empathy consistent with past research.…”

Pandemic Leadership: Sex Differences and Their Evolutionary–Developmental Origins

“…Empathizing refers to the ability to recognize another person's mental state ("cognitive empathy") and the tendency to respond to it with an appropriate emotion (Greenberg et al, 2018;Archer, 2019). Men tend to score higher on systemizing (Cohen's ds are generally medium to very large, ranging between 0.31 and 1.21), while women, on average, have higher scores on empathizing (Cohen's ds generally ranging between -0.39 and -0.87) (Greenberg et al, 2018;Archer, 2019; see also Löffler and Greitemeyer, 2021).…”