Gender-related differences in the production and perception of emotion

This article discusses a study into gender-related differences in the experience, display and perception of positive and negative emotions. The problem is addressed by a combination of a production and a perception experiment. The production study makes use of a mood induction procedure which aims to elicit positive and negative emotions in subjects by letting them view different kinds of movie clips. This method turned out to be extremely effective, and also revealed that women experience emotions more intensively than men. Video clips collected through the production study were then shown to independent observers, whose task it was to judge whether the recorded speakers were in a negative or positive condition. Overall, judges were very accurate in estimating whether a displayed speaker was positive or negative. Moreover, there were again gender differences in that female speakers were more expressive than male speakers, and female observers were more accurate in their judgments than male observers.