Ask anyone which sex is more emotional and the answer will always be women. We’ve all seen that girl sobbing on the phone, and thought to ourselves, or even mentioned it to our friend, “wow, that girl looks quite unstable.” Where as maybe you see a guy yelling at a friend, and your first thoughts are, “I wonder what happened today that is making him react this way?”
Reinforced by media depictions, pop culture and even scientific literature, women are believed to be more emotionally expressive, and dramatic. But even though everyone thinks that women are more emotional than men, the question remains whether sex actually determines emotional intensity or the differences in emotional expression might just be in the eye of the beholder.
All over campus, we hear of couples breaking up because the girl is “crazy,” their relationship ended because her infatuation with him got out of control. It’s like Barney’s “Crazy-Hot Scale” from How I Met Your Mother How I Met Your Mother (otherwise known as article 86 of The Bro Code). Basically, a woman is allowed to be crazy as long as they are equally hot. The diagonal line across the scale, known as the “Vicky Mendoza Diagonal” is based on a girl who shaved her head, then lost ten pounds, then stabbed Barney with a fork, and finally got a boob job; constantly jumping back and forth across the line of hot vs. crazy.
Similarly, after winning The Bachelor Season 18, Courtney was described by other contestants and viewers as a sociopath, twisted, evil and conniving. And of course everyone is familiar with Monica from Friends, known for her neurotic cleaning and obsessive personality. All of our favorite TV shows tell us that women are more emotional than men, but how scientifically valid is this claim?
In a recent groundbreaking study, “She’s Emotional. He’s Having a Bad Day,” Lisa Barrett and Eliza Bliss-Moreau explain that women are labeled as more emotional because of the way their behaviors and expressions are explained (not the actual behaviors themselves). There are no differences in the brain areas or bodily changes related to emotion when females and males are presented with same emotional prompt.
And yet even without any scientific backing, women are still seen as the more emotional sex because we see females’ emotional behavior as evidence of internal characteristics, whereas males’ emotional behavior can be explained by the external situation. Essentially when a female is showing emotion, this is because she is “emotional,” but when a male is showing emotion, it is because “he is having a bad day.
So how do these gender emotion stereotypes relate to our own college life? In a recent study, male and female targets expressed anger or sadness in a job interview when asked to re-live how they felt after botching a previous job account. This study found that anger during an interview is more effective for males, while sadness is more effective for females. Moreover, women’s emotional reactions were attributed to internal characteristics, claiming “she seems like an angry person” or “looks out of control,” while men’s emotional reactions were attributed to external characteristics like a frustrating situation or something that happened to anger him.
So what can we take away from this? While not all of us are competing for summer analyst positions in finance (despite the masses of Yale students in business suits attending information sessions almost every night), maybe you should think twice next time you go talk to your professor about that C he gave you on your essay. Crying will only reinforce the stereotype of being emotional unstable but being angry is even worse! Regardless, the professor will likely attribute your poor grade to your lack of intelligence.
Now I am not suggesting all female Yalies storm into Dean Mary Millers office demanding re-grades on their badly written exams– but we should be aware that this stereotype has no scientific backing and look for ways to decrease its role in emotional attribution. The most effective strategy to date is giving a clear situation reason for emotional outburst. When women provide an external factor to explain their emotions, essentially giving a reason for why they were “having a bad day,” the gender bias is eliminated. So when you see that girl crying on the phone, stop and think, it might be because she is having a bad day, not that she is incredibly emotional.