Study Finds Women Identify Certain Emotions Better than Men
October 26th, 2009 |
A GoodTherapy.org News Headline
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that in general, women are better able to identify emotions than men. But until recently, it has been difficult to secure objective, meaningful findings upon which furhter research can be based. The need for such evidence has been addressed recently with the completion of a study performed at Université de Montréal. The study tested women and men for their powers of identification of fear and disgust, two important emotions in terms of psychological evolution. Using live and recorded actors, the study was able to incorporate facial movements, an aspect of emotion identification that has been absent in previous efforts. The research may help develop tools to help men improve their ability to perceive others.
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13 comments so far
I think this is true… what with we hearing that women are generally more prone to be emotional and to be able to connect to emotions and stuff like that…
It is hard to understand why a study like this even needed to be funded. Hands down women are always better at reading others and getting a feel for the perceptions of others. Hopefully something good can come from this like helping me improve their abilities to do the same thing.
Men are physically stronger and women are better in the emotions department.End of the discussion.
I think the level of identifying emotions depends on the person, but women may have a greater average. But this also means there would be certain men who have better power of identification of emotions than a few women.
According to the study, woman are better at detecting fear and disgust than men. Look at the animal world. Does the hen or the rooster protect the hen house. Do not let mama alligator see you next to her baby gators! Mothers instinctively need to better detect danger to protect their young while the Fathers instinctively hunt for food.
Women are better at that because they are more intuitive. We also really look at faces for non-verbal signals. Men don’t. Women are more observant in that respect because they listen not just with their ears but their eyes.
Newsflash: Men distance themselves from emotions as much as humanly possible! No wonder women came out on top there. They always have and always will be the more emotionally attuned gender. Long may that last. It would be a sad day if caring was replaced by apathy.
The mothering instinct has been honed for centuries. Women recognize the signs of upset and fear without a word being spoken in everyone from the ninety year old granny to the day old baby, right down to the family pets and everyone in between.
They have watched for these signals in their child’s demeanor from the earliest days when their child was incapable of expressing itself any other way. A very small number of men ever seem to attain that level of emotional sensitivity IMHO.
That goes without saying!! Women have a better EQ than men. I am in HR and we know this for a fact.
is this specifically based on only fear and disgust or on other kinds of emotional patterns as well? I have always been able to tell if someone keeps something to themselves even in the most impossible situations.
Are you joking? Women identify EVERY emotion better than men.
Women are supposed to be more rationale and sensible and also able to understand emotions much better than men can, and this is a fact that is best left as it is, as it can be pretty obvious at times.
Although I do agree that women are indeed better at identifying emotions, the ability to do so also depends on several other factors like the situation, the mood of a person, the concentration levels amongst other things. Thus, there might and will be situations where a man can identify emotions better than a woman!