The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

Communication 251

more reactive to some of the films. The in-

vestigators suggested men were more likely

to be internalizers with respect to emotions,

by experiencing them physiologically but

not expressing them, and women were more

likely to be externalizers with respect to emo-

tions, by expressing them outwardly but not

reacting physiologically.

Attributions for Emotion

Regardless of the data, the stereotype of

women as the more emotional sex persists.

This is supported by research on the attribu-

tions people make for women’s and men’s

emotions. Women’s emotions are more likely

to be attributed to internal states, whereas

men’s emotions are more likely to be attrib-

uted to situational factors. Even when situ-

ational attributions are given for a person’s

emotional state, people tend to believe that

women are “emotional” and men are “hav-

ing a bad day” (Barrett & Bliss-Moreau, 2009).

This is not surprising as being “emotional” is

part of the female gender role. These different

attributions have implications for how women

and men are viewed when expressing an emo-

tion. A laboratory study showed that both

women and men view the expression of an-

ger positively when it comes from a male job

candidate but negatively when it comes from

a female job candidate (Brescoll & Uhlmann,

2008). Respondents granted higher status and

higher salary to an angry than a sad male job

candidate, but lower status and lower salary

to an angry than a sad female job candidate.

The findings for salary are shown in Figure

7.11. Differential attributions explained these

findings. Again, the female’s anger displays

were attributed to internal causes (being an

emotional person), whereas the male’s anger

displays were attributed to situational causes

(someone made him angry).

TAKE HOME POINTS

■ Retrospective measures of emotion show that women

report more emotion than men, but online measures

tend to show no sex differences in the experience of

emotion.

■ Women may encode emotional events in greater detail

than men, which would account for the sex difference

in retrospective emotion reports.

■ Women are more likely than men to express the major-

ity of emotions; the one exception is anger, which men

express more than women.

■ Physiological data suggest that either men are more

reactive than women or there are no sex differences in

physiological reactivity to emotion.

■ Women’s emotions are attributed to internal causes,

whereas men’s emotions are attributed to external

causes.

FIGURE 7.11 Male job candidates who were

angry were granted higher status and more

money than male candidates who were sad. Fe-

male job candidates who were angry received

lower status and a lower salary compared to fe-

male candidates who were sad.

Source: Adapted from Brescoll and Uhlmann

(2008).

40,000

35,000

30,000

25,000

20,000

15,000

10,000

5,000

0

Angry Sad

Male Female

Angry Sad

Annual Salary

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