Are women really more emotional than men?

**Joseph Chance** (0:04)
Are women really more emotional than men?
Thanks for asking.
Irrational, over dramatic, hysterical, sensitive. If you're a woman, you have most likely been described using one of those words or similar in the past. That's because there's a common belief that women are more emotional than men, which still persists to this day. It can sometimes be framed in a positive way, saying that women show more empathy, but all too often it's used as a weapon to dismiss what a woman is saying. Is there any scientific basis to such assumptions? Actually, no. And as it turns out, it's not based in reality at all. Back in October 2021, a study entitled Little Evidence for the Influence of Sex or Ovarian Hormones on Effective Variability was published in the highly respected scientific journal Nature. Researchers from the University of Michigan and Purdue University in the US monitored the emotions of 142 women and men for a period of 75 days. Every evening, participants answered a 20-minute online questionnaire about the emotions they had experienced during the day. They had to rate the extent to which they had experienced certain positive effect items like Happy and Proud on a scale of 1 to 5 The same was done for negative effect items like Irritable and Afraid. A mix of women with natural menstrual cycles and women using contraception were selected as participants, specifically to look into the idea that women are more emotionally variable during their cycle, a long-standing popular belief. What were the results then? The emotional stability and fluctuations of men and women are clearly, consistently, and undeniably more similar than they are different, according to study lead author Adrienne Belz, as quoted by today.com. Also talking to today.com, Robert Blum, a professor of public health and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, stressed that there is in fact no biological basis for thinking that women are more emotional than men. So humans have been misguided for a long time in that respect. However, Blum also pointed out that there is a strong and global finding that males are socialized to hide their emotions, while it is far more legitimate for females to share them. And the effects of these double standards are dangerous. How so? Statistics show that the overwhelming majority of people who end up in prison are men.
The same is true when it comes to the proportion of people who commit suicide. This is partly due to men struggling to externalize and manage their emotions, precisely because of societal expectations and upbringing. Meanwhile, incorrect assumptions about women have led to a lack of understanding of the female body. Generally speaking, women are diagnosed with chronic illnesses and given pain relief less often than men. That's because they have historically been excluded from scientific and medical studies due to their presumed emotional variability.
There you have it.
Now you know whether women are really more emotional than men. In under three minutes, we answer your questions and help you understand the true meaning behind the trends, concepts and acronyms that are making headlines. Listen along and you will really know it for sure.