Sex differences in emotion: Expression, experience, and physiology.

Abstract

Although previous studies of emotional responding have found that women are more emotionally expressive than men, it remains unclear whether men and women differ in other domains of emotional response. We assessed the expressive, experiential, and physiological emotional responses of men and women in 2 studies. In Study 1, undergraduates viewed emotional films. Compared with men, women were more expressive, did not differ in reports of experienced emotion, and demonstrated different patterns of skin conductance responding. In Study 2, undergraduate men and women viewed emotional films and completed self-report scales of expressivity, gender role characteristics, and family expressiveness. Results replicated those from Study 1, and gender role characteristics and family expressiveness moderated the relationship between sex and expressivity.Conventional wisdom suggests that women are more "emotional" than men. Does this mean that women express their emotions more than men? Or, do women experience more or stronger emotion than men? Do women have stronger physiological responses than men in emotional situations? A fairly substantial body of research has demonstrated that women are more emotionally expressive than men; however, it remains somewhat unclear whether women also experience more emotion than men and whether they show greater physiological changes associated with emotion. The present study addressed two questions. First, we examined the expressive, experiential, and physiological domains of emotion in men and women to determine whether women are indeed "more emotional" or whether they are just more emotionally expressive. Second, we examined family expressivity and personality characteristics typically associated with masculinity and femininity to determine whether these characteristics could help account for expressive differences between men and women.We conceptualize emotion as having multiple components, including a behavioral or expressive component, an experiential or verbal component, and a physiological component, which is consistent with a number of emotion theorists and researchers

Personality traits modulate skin conductance response to emotional pictures: An investigation with Cloninger’s model of personality

“…This particular sensitivity of women to negative affects was previously found with SCR and other psychophysiological indices as well as with subjective ratings of emotions (Bradley, Codispoti, Sabatinelli, & Lang, 2001;Kring & Gordon, 1998). Interestingly, this gender influence was not dependent of HA scores, suggesting that BIS would not be involved in this particular sensitivity, as could have been expected regarding women's classically higher scores in HA and BIS-related scales (Hansenne et al, 2005;Jorm et al, 1999).…”

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“…When the total scores were examined, the female students were again found to have higher scores comparing to the male students (p<0.05; Table 3, 4). The results of the previous studies also are in parallel with the date obtained from the present study, suggesting that males are more inclined to escape from emotional situations, while females are more willing to approach in such cases (Kring & Gordon, 1998). In addition, there are also studies suggesting that the emotional responds of individuals differs depending on their gender (Nolen-Hoeksema & Girgus, 1994;Fujita et al, 1991).…”

Developing a reduced consumer-led lexicon to measure emotional response to beer

“…Research appears to bear this out with females exceeding males in reported emotionality and emotion expressivity (Allen and Haccoun (1976); Gross and John (1995)). Gender roles have been discussed as playing an important role in emotions (Fischer (1993); Grossman and Wood (1993)) and gender role characteristic have indeed been found to moderate the relationship between gender and emotion expressivity (Kring & Gordon, 1998). This could offer a partial explanation for the lower emotional ratings by women as beer has been historically, and continues to be, viewed as a relatively masculine beverage.…”