engleski

Men are from Mars, women are from Venus: Gender differences in affective processing

Emotions are very important in directing human behaviour and interactions, and affective processing could be of vital importance for individuals. Although gender differences in emotion recognition and reactions are one of the most robust gender stereotypes, its’ empirical support is far less consistent than might be expected. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate gender differences and the role of empathy in affective processing using emotion recognition and affective picture rating tasks. The study was conducted on a convenience sample of 144 adults (43.1% male, 19-33 age old, Mage = 22.18, SDage = 2.26). Firstly, participants completed the Affective and Cognitive Measure of Empathy, followed by the emotion recognition and picture rating tasks presented via tablet. In the emotion recognition task, photographs showing six basic emotions from The Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces (KDEF) were presented to participants whose objective was to correctly label the emotions. For the picture rating task, pictures differing in valence and arousal were selected from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) and presented to the participants who completed self-report measures of emotional experience after each trial. Reaction time was measured during both tasks. The results indicated a female advantage in overall accuracy and speed of emotion recognition in addition to their higher accuracy and faster reaction times in recognizing specific emotions. In the affective picture rating task, females rated negative pictures more negatively than males, and those pictures induced higher arousal in them compared to males. Gender differences in empathy emerged as well, with females obtaining higher results than males on measures of affective empathy. The results of this study corroborated gender differences in emotion recognition ability. Additionally, gender differences in relations of empathy and affective processing revealed interesting patterns in line with previous research in this field.

gender differences ; empathy ; affective processing ; KDEF ; IAPS

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