For many years, it has been widely accepted that females outperform males in emotional information processing. It is believed that females excel at using their emotional information, while males are less proficient. However, few studies have studied the role of emotional information in a naturalistic social-emotional task. This study explored whether there is a sex difference in using emotional cues in the perception of the face with negative affective expression. With the media full of male-bashing, it is nice to see some research showing that men have a lot to learn from women. This study suggests that women are more responsive to social feedback and emotions in decision-making than men. We know that women are more tuned into socializing and put a lot more time and effort into this and now it appears that when they are playing a gambling game they can use emotional material/information much more effectively.
Female subjects were more willing to accept disadvantageous monetary conditions in comparison to males, to retaliate against their opponents’ negative facial expressions. This was especially true when the opponents made angry faces. Women were found to have a higher level of sensitivity to emotional cues than men, which provides a new perspective for explaining gender differences in interpersonal sensitivity and evaluation of social interactions.
Most people are probably familiar with the stereotypes that women both express and feel emotions much more strongly than men. This stereotype, often taken as a given is based on evolutionary accounts suggesting that the underlying reason for such sex difference in emotional displays is due to ancestral selection pressures –men were primarily selected to show aggression and dominance, which is accomplished by exhibiting little or no overt emotion while, on the other hand, women were selected to act in a nurturing role and, therefore, needed to be able to signal their emotional state to communicate effectively with children.
The study discussed above contributes new and important insight into the processing of visual emotional stimuli. For the first time, it was demonstrated that individuals rated the photographs with highly emotional content as significantly more arousing than the average of all photographs regardless of their valence. If arousal is used as a proxy for prioritization, these findings suggest that both male and female participants prioritized processing emotional facial expressions with higher arousal content over others despite their valence.
“Why are women so emotional?” The answer will be found in the way their brains work. On average, women use both sides of the brain to process the information from their surroundings. They are not unilateral or linear thinkers but employ a “both-and” approach to problem-solving. As a result, they tend to see more “patterns” and potential outcomes than men.