Gender and emotions

Abstract

In two groups, one Australian (n=2199), the other international (n=6868), gender differences in self-reports of the frequency and intensity of recently experiencing eight emotions were assessed by t-tests, and effect sizes measured using Cohen's d (Cohen, 1992). The eight emotions were Affection, Anger, Contentment, Fear, Guilt, Joy, Pride, and Sadness. In the Australian group statistically significant differences between the genders were found for the frequency of Affection, Anger, Fear, Joy, and Sadness with females scoring higher. Males scored higher on Pride. The only intensity differences for the Australian group were for Affection and Sadness where females scored higher, and Pride where males scored higher. For the international sample, significant gender differences for the frequency of Affection, Anger, Contentment, Fear, Joy and Sadness were found with females scoring higher than males. Gender differences in intensity were found for all of the emotions except Pride, again with males scoring higher than females. Expressed in standard deviation units, all of the effect sizes are small, and some are extremely small. The largest effect size was d=0.30 for Affection in the international group. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.