Module 12

GENDER AND EMOTIONAL

EXPRESSION
Learning outcome:

At the end of the lesson the students will be able to:

1. Define the gender and emotional expression.

2. Identify the differences between women and men.

 Gender and emotional expression

- seeks to identify the differences between women and men and the
various ways in which they express
their emotions. Stereotypes are powerful, and men and women
from various cultures have been shown to accept
the western stereotype that women are more emotional than men.
- Specifically, women are believed to experience and express
discrete emotions such as happiness, fear, disgust, and sadness
more than men.
- Some researchers have concluded that the observed emotional
differences between men and women primarily stem from
socialized gender roles, rather than biology. Thus, the range
of emotional expression that certain populations experience is
based, in large part, on their culture's expectations
for femininity and masculinity
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Major theories
- Many psychologists reject the notion that men actually experience
emotions less frequently than do women. Instead, researchers
have suggested that men exhibit restrictive emotionality.

Restrictive emotionality
- refers to a tendency to inhibit the expression of certain emotions
and an unwillingness to self-disclose intimate feelings.
- Men's restrictive emotionality has been shown to influence health,
emotional appraisal and overall identity. Furthermore, tendencies toward
restrictive emotionality are correlated with an increased risk of certain
anxiety disorders.
- Another researcher found that this gender difference decreases In the
Handbook of Emotions, Leslie R. Brody and Judith A.
Hall report that this difference in emotional expression starts at a young
age, as early as 4 and 6 years old, as girls begin to express more sadness
and anxiety than their male counterparts.
Brody and Hall (2008)
- report that women generally smile, laugh, nod and use hand
gestures more than men do. The only known exception to this rule
is that men more frequently express anger. However, all of these
effects are not commonly observed until after preschool,
suggesting that these differences might be the result of
certain socialization processes. Women are also more accurate
expressers of emotion, when "posing deliberately and when
observed unobtrusively." This increased expressiveness in
emotional expression is consistent across cultures, with women
reporting more intense emotional experiences and more overt
emotional expressions across 37 cultures.

Major empirical findings

- Some research has shown that culture and context-specific gender
roles have a stronger influence on emotional expression than do
biological factors. "Empirical evidence suggests that girls are
socialized to be emotional, nonaggressive, nurturing, and
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obedient, whereas boys are socialized to be unemotional,

aggressive, achievement oriented, and self-reliant.
- Peers continue this process as children develop and mature in
effect constraining how, where, why, and with whom certain
emotions are expressed"
- .In one cross-cultural study, it was shown that in nearly all
cultures women generally cry more than men, however the
gender difference tends to be more significant in democratic and
affluent countries. Another study suggests that people tend to
exhibit more intense negative facial expressions in solitary
conditions, and smile more when others are present. In this
experiment, men and women did not differ in their anger
expression in non-social conditions.

Nature versus nurture

- The social-developmental hypothesis is one of the major
arguments for the impact of nurture on emotional expression. The
social-developmental theory explains gender differences in
emotion expression through emphasizing "children's active role in
their development of gendered behavior" through learning by
watching adults or through interactions with their parents and
peers (Chaplin & Aldao, 2012). This hypothesis points to the fact
that infants are not born with the same differences in emotional
expression and gender differences generally grow more
pronounced as children age. In a 2012 meta-analysis conducted
by Tara M. Chaplin and Amelia Aldao, researchers reviewed
gender differences in emotion expression from the infancy period
through adolescence in order to determine the impact of
development and age on gender differences. Their findings
support the notion that social factors in a child's development play
a large role in the gender differences that later emerge, as "gender
differences were not found in infancy…but they emerged by the
toddler/preschool period and in childhood. One possible
explanation for this developmental difference comes from the
child's parents. In many Western cultures, for example, parents
discuss and express a broader range of emotions with their
daughters than their sons. As children grow older, these patterns
continue with their peers.
The second major argument in support of social influences on emotion
expression involves the idea that a society's gender roles reinforce gender
differences. The social constructionist theory states that children grow up
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in the context of gender roles that naturally place them in role-specific

situations, influencing their emotion expression in that context.
Gender stereotypes in heteronormative
-  societies enforce expectations for women to suppress anger and
contempt, but express other emotions using words and facial
expressions. Simultaneously, these same cultural norms
discourage men from verbally expressing emotions, with the
exception of anger or contempt (Wester, Pressly, & Heesacker,
2002). As an adaptive feature, regulation of expression of emotion
involves the consideration the social demands of any given
situation. Studies have shown that "fewer gender differences in
emotion expression may be found when children are with
someone they trust and know well than when children are with an
unfamiliar person" (Chaplin & Aldao, 2012). Generally, people are
trained to behave in a "socially acceptable" way around strangers
or acquaintances, suggesting that the social context of an
environment can shape the levels of emotion expression.
- Biological factors also play a role in influencing emotion
expression. One central biological argument is related to cognitive
differences between genders. In a 2008 study using functional
magnetic reasoning imaging (fMRI) to monitor brain activity in
participants, researchers found that men and women differ in
neural responses when experiencing negative emotions.
"Compared with women, men showed lesser increases in
prefrontal regions that are associated with reappraisal, greater
decreases in the amygdala, which is associated with emotional
responding, and lesser engagement of ventral striatal regions,
which are associated with reward processing" (McRae, Ochsner,
Mauss, Gabrieli, & Gross, 2008). The way that male and female
brains respond to emotions likely impacts the expression of those
emotions.
- The biological roots of gender differences interact with the social
environment in various ways. Biological theorists propose that
females and males have innate differences that exist at birth, but
unfold with age and maturation in response to interactions with
their specific environments (Chaplin & Aldao, 2012). An important
argument for this viewpoint is that "gender differences in emotion
expression are the result of a combination of biologically based
temperamental predispositions and the socialization of boys and
girls to adopt gender-related display rules for emotion
expression" It has been suggested that even infant males display
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higher levels of activity and arousal than do infant girls as well as

a lower ability for language and behavior inhibitory controls,
which are biologically-based characteristics. This "nature"
argument interacts with "nurture" in that "parents and other
socialization agents may respond to boys in ways that dampen
emotional expressiveness…as a way to down-regulate their high
emotional arousal and activity levels". On the other hand, girls are
encouraged to utilize their higher vocabulary and communication
skills to verbally express their emotions to parents and other
adults, which would also highlight expression differences between
genders.

"Man-box”

- an idea often attributed to TED speaker Tony Porter, attempts to

describe the societal restrictions on a man's freedom of emotional
expression. As Porter describes, this restriction is a primary
reason for high rates of violence against women. Through his
organization, A Call to Men, Porter and his team organize
initiatives and create awareness about what it means to possess
"healthy manhood. The 'man-box' is an analogous attempt to shed
light on some of the cultural and social barriers we impose on men
such as emotional reservedness, lack of physical intimacy with
other men, and expectations of aggressive and/or dominant
behavior in social environments.
Emotions
- are complex and involve different components, such as
physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious
experience. While the expressive component of emotion has been
widely studied, it remains unclear whether or not men and
women differ in other aspects of emotion.
- Most researchers agree that women are more emotionally
expressive, but not that they experience more emotions than men
do. Some studies have shown that women are more likely to
produce inauthentic smiles than men do, while others have shown
the opposite. This debate is significant because emotion can be
generated by adopting an action that is associated with a
particular emotion, such as smiling and speaking softly.
- A possible explanation is that both men and women's emotional
expressiveness is susceptible to social factors. Men and women
may be reinforced by social and cultural standards to express
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emotions differently, but it is not necessarily true in terms of

experiencing emotions. For instance, studies suggest that women
often occupy roles that conform to feminine display rules, which
require them to amplify their emotional response to impress
others.

ACTIVITY
Journal Making
Direction: After you read this module you may have an idea about
this activity. Make the journal creative and colorful.
Make a daily journal about your feelings and emotion for one week.
Example:
You’re feeling towards your boyfriend/girlfriend/friends/neighbors
and family if you have misunderstanding, happy or any emotions that you
feel on that day.