Sex differences in the time course of emotion

Abstract

Conventional wisdom holds that women are more “emotional” than men. However, empirical research to date has suggested that sex differences in emotion are considerably more complex than this simple adage would suggest. While some research suggests that women may experience emotion more strongly than men, other research proposes that this effect may hold only for some emotions, or only for certain measures. Further, while much research holds that women are more expressive than men, other research suggests that this does not hold across all emotions. Both theoretical and empirical work has suggested that emotional responses may be fundamentally driven by the engagement of approach and avoidance motivational systems. The present study aims to further elucidate sex differences in emotional responding by examining these motivational underpinnings of emotional responses. Our goal is to clarify whether sex differences are evident at this level of analysis and, if so, what light they may shed on the more complex data delineated above. Further, the present study examines these motivational engagements over time to assess both whether men and women differ in their immediate response to emotion-eliciting stimuli and whether men and women differ in their recovery from these responses.