Emotion

Are women more "emotional" than men and if so is this a bad thing?

Comments

I am not sure why you use quotation marks around the word "emotional". Certainly there are cases where one person is more emotional than another -- in a given situation, or in general -- so there is nothing suspect about the word. Perhaps you are marking the fact that "emotional" can be used as a term of disparagement, and you do not want to accept this usage. Or perhaps you are thinking of the difference between having emotions and showing emotions, realizing that those who show their emotions are often considered more emotional, whether or not this is true.

Your question, in any case, concerns a possible difference between the amount or intensity of emotions in the lives of (most) women lives versus the lives of (most) men. It is hard to design a study that would settle your question since it is not clear how best to measure the presence of an emotion (self-report? bodily changes? facial expression?) and because it is not easy to create situations that have the same significance for many different people (what is worrisome to one person may be merely curious to another, or what is amusing to one person may tedious to another). Nonetheless, I think there are several reasons to think that women do, in fact, tend to be more emotional than men:

1. All humans have a tendency to mirror the emotional states that they notice in others, and women (in response to both biological and social factors) tend to be more attentive to the mental states of others.

2. Emotion serves to sustain inclinations across periods of time in which it is not possible to act on that inclination, and most societies restrict the actions of women more than those of men.

3. Scientific and technological training (for surgery, for example) often requires people to disengage from their emotions, and women are less likely to undergo such training.

These reasons do not imply that being more emotional is a bad thing, or a good thing -- in general. For there are some situations in which greater attentiveness to the mental states of others is considerate or useful, and other situations in which such attentiveness is intrusive or distracting. There are some situations in which suspending or delaying action gives one the chance to act more effectively, and other situations in which it means that one loses the chance to act at all. And some sorts of scientific and technological training have been very beneficial to humans, while other sorts have been very harmful.

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