Gender and Emotions!
Our ability for perceiving and expressing emotions is without a doubt what distinguishes humans from other creatures. Our emotions drive every move we take and aid in our judgment of what is important and what is not. As per research, our genes contain emotional information that is innate in nature; recognizing this idea is significant because it contains the key to solving some of the complexities of human nature. While considering gender, It is safe to say that men and women show significant differences in their experience and expression of emotions.
In 1859, Charles Darwin, through his book - The Origin of Species By Natural Selection -, offered the key to understanding how new species developed throughout the course of evolutionary time, their relationship with one another and other aspects of the world. Darwin's and other naturalists' theories of evolution served as the foundation for the entire area of evolutionary psychology. According to research, there are various psychological distinctions between genders, including those between girls and boys and women and men. Evolutionary Psychology focuses on explaining these variations in terms of biological adaptations. Essentially, this entails looking at the many reproductive difficulties that the sexes have encountered throughout the course of our species' history and relating those to psychological and behavioral traits.
Depending on the circumstance, men and women may experience distinct or comparable types of emotions. They are supposed to act and express emotion in a way that blends in with society and is gender appropriate based on particular gender standards. For instance, women are said to cry more frequently and have positive crying experiences than men, and it's strongly expected that women will display certain feelings like compassion and concern for others as it fits in perfectly with the image that society has about women. One of the most well-known gender stereotypes is that women are more emotional than men and many of these notions stem from certain beliefs and expectations that society has about women. However, on the other hand, psychologists believe that men are more aggressive than women.
Mostly in the western culture, it is considered that the “heart” and the “mind” are two main links to emotions. To be more specific- “ heart” or emotionality is the symbol of femininity and “mind” that of masculinity. According to Stanley Hall, women focus more on following their intuition and often express emotions such as anger, fear and compassion in their behaviors while men are less frequently in touch with their emotions and express them in solitude. As per psychological studies, frequently there are significantly larger distinctions between how men and women express their emotions than there are between how those emotions are experienced. Similar views were expressed by Freud (1905) and Fisher (1998), who claimed that women have a great inclination for mood swings. He believed that women were the more envious gender. Additionally, he asserted that women are more prone to neurosis. The response from behaviorists was that women are bad mothers because they can't maintain a healthy emotional distance from their child and because their "uncontrollable" emotions endanger kids. While the approach to raising children that is sound and proper is one of masculine objectivism and a lack of emotion. These theories cannot be considered, since half of these beliefs are out-of-date notions expressed only from a man's standpoint toward women.
While looking into behavior and gender, sex and gender have long been connected with behaviors. Various studies repeatedly illustrate that men are more prone than women to engage in risky behaviors, whereas women are more likely to engage in healthy behaviors. Critical men's studies and feminist theory have had a heavy impact on how gender is viewed as emerging from actions in daily life (Butler, 1993; Connell, 1995). You could think of certain behaviors as a means to both produce and reproduce gender. By engaging in specific behaviors that have cultural meanings associated with distinct types of masculinity and femininity, we enact many gender expressions.
The idea that men and women show a large range of differences when it comes to emotions, is not always true. Although men and women express various emotions in more similar ways, empirical data from a few studies has revealed that they do so more willingly under different circumstances.Researchers claim that women are not more emotional than men, despite popular belief to the contrary. Different genders frequently interpret emotions like enthusiasm, anxiousness, and strength in different ways. One of the research conducted by employing three different techniques to identify emotions before comparing the sexes showed that: Few to no differences were found between the males and the various groups of women, demonstrating that men and women experience emotional ups and downs to the same degree, but for probably different reasons. Hence differentiating emotions based on gender stereotypes and preconceived notions may not be the right take on understanding human emotions.
In conclusion, it’s fair to say that emotional feelings and experiences are what makes humans different from other animals. The ability to feel and showcase emotions is more important than the genders exhibiting it.
About author:
Sparsha Rai is a first year student, currently studying B.Sc in Applied Psychology from NMIMS, Mumbai. She is originally from Mangalore, a stunning city located in the Indian state of Karnataka. She is a creative and funny individual, who uses music and jokes to get through the obstacles in life. She intends on being the best at whatever she does and aspires to become the best and most original version of herself.
References:
https://dornsife.usc.edu/wendy-wood/evolutionary-origins-of-behavior/
https://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/articles/2017/opinion/evolutionary-history-of-men-and-women
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