Are women in fact more emotionally expressive than men? New research by McDuff, Kodra, Kaliouby, & LaFrance suggests they are. And they aren’t. Women do smile more than men, and there is evidence that women exaggerate facial expressions for positive emotion. However, McDuff and colleagues believe that smiling and other displays of positive emotion are only part of the picture.
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McDuff and colleagues developed a unique paradigm for evaluating facial behaviors in response to emotional stimuli. They recruited more than 2000 participants from five different countries to watch advertisements for different, commonly-used products.
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This pattern of findings, with women expressing more happiness and sadness, and men expressing more anger, could reflect social conventions about gender-appropriate behavior.
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Women were not universally more expressive than men, as men were more likely to demonstrate anger-based facial behaviors than women.
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Are women and men relatively more expressive for happiness and anger, respectively, because they experience these emotions more intensely? Unfortunately, participants did not report their internal emotional reactions to the ads, and so there is no way to make a direct connection between facial expression and emotional experience.
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