Gender differences in emotional responses: A psychophysiological study

The impact of sex and menstrual cycle on the acoustic startle response

“…For example, ASR heritability has been reported to be in the range of 59-61% [55] and 67% [56]. Nevertheless, previous studies reported conflicting results on the impact of sex on ASR: while some found no difference between men and women [32,[35][36][37] others reported larger startle magnitudes in women at least in some ASR parameters [27,38,39]. Aside from differences in the startle paradigms used, these contradictory findings might be partly the result of varying effects of hormonal contraceptives or the menstrual cycle which were not controlled for in the majority of these studies.…”

“…Recently, Quevedo et al [39] reported higher response probability in ASR in females in a sample of healthy individuals with an effect size of Á 2 = 0.05. Similarly, women showed an overall greater startle amplitude (effect size: Cohen's d = 0.80) as well as greater FPS than men in an emotional startle paradigm [27].…”

“…Stronger FPS has been found in women compared to men (e.g. [25][26][27]) while other studies found no sex differences in FPS or PAS [28,29]. Furthermore, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that compared to young men premenopausal women show smaller PPI [30][31][32][33] while there are no differences in PPI between postmenopausal women and men of similar age [32].…”

Sensitivity to emotional scene content outside the focus of attention

“…Relative to men, women typically judge unpleasant pictures as more negative (Bradley, Codispoti, Sabatinelli & Lang, 2001b;Calvo & Avero, 2009;Gomez et al, 2013;Moltó et al, 2013), and are more reactive both psychophysiologically (Bianchin & Angrilli, 2012;Bradley, Codispoti, et al, 2001b;Gard & Kring, 2007) and neurophysiologically (ERPs: Bianchin & Angrilli (2012) and fMRI: Sabatinelli, Flaisch, Bradley, Fitzsimmons & Lang (2004)). In contrast, for pleasant pictures, sex differences are less likely to appear, except for erotic images (couples and opposite-sex erotica), with men being typically more reactive than women (Bradley, Codispoti, et al, 2001b;Gomez et al, 2013;Sabatinelli et al, 2004).…”

Is The Meaning of Symptoms the Same in Women And Men?

“…Some major methodological sources of bias, that have been held responsible for part of the sex differences found in health surveys, such as the poor definition of the morbidity concept and aspects of the data collection. Part of the sex differences found in health surveys can be explained by higher female symptom sensitivity, defined as a readiness to perceive physical sensations as symptoms of illness [7], and a biologically grounded greater sensitivity and vulnerability of women to adverse/ stressful events [8].…”