Gender and Emotional Expressiveness: An Analysis of Prosodic Features in Emotional Expression

Gender and Emotional Expressiveness: An Analysis of Prosodic Features in Emotional Expression RÓISÍN PARKINS* Abstract Studies looking into emotional differences between men and women are plentiful. Conventional wisdom leads us to believe that women are more emotional than men, or at least are more emotionally expressive (Kring & Gordon 1998). This conventional wisdom has been supported by the results of many academic research papers indicating that women are indeed the more emotionally expressive of the genders (e.g. Ashmore & Del Boca 1979; Brody & Hall 2000; Johnson & Shulman 1988). The purpose of this paper is to examine the emotional expressivity of men and women in the realm of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Data was collected through the analysis of posts, tweets and comments from a sample of native Australian men and women and the implications of the findings from this data are discussed.