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Psychology 320: Gender Psychology

Lecture 29

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Intelligence, Cognitive Abilities and Emotion:

2. Are there sex differences in emotional experience?

1. Do females and males differ in their cognitive abilities? (continued)

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Research on spatial ability:

Wechsler’s performance intelligence scale: M > F.

Spatial perception: M > F.

Mental rotation: M > F.

Spatial visualization: M > F.

Spatiotemporal ability: M > F.

Spatial location memory: F >M. Associated with sex differences in reading and interpreting maps.

Do females and males differ in their cognitive abilities? (continued)

4Spatial Perception

Rod and Frame Test

Water Level Problem

5Mental Rotation

6Spatial Visualization

Embedded FiguresPaper Folding

Embedded Figures

7Spatiotemporal Ability

8Spatial Location Memory

9Maps

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Sex differences in spatial ability increase across age groups, but appear to be decreasing across time.

Meta-analyses: ds for overall spatial ability range from +.13 to +.25.

Hyde (1981) maintains that gender accounts for less than 5 % of variance in spatial ability.

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• “Comprehensive” assessments of sex differences in cognitive abilities and cross-cultural assessments of sex differences in cognitive abilities are consistent with the research findings noted thus far:

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Grade 12 Profile: Gender Difference and Similarity for 15 Types of Tests (Cole, 1997)

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Are there sex differences in emotional experience?

Joan and John have just learned that their neighbor was in a car accident and lost her baby. One cries; the other does not.

Brenda and Mark have just witnessed two teenager vandalize their car. One yells at the teenagers and chases them down the street; the other ignores the incident.

• Picture the following:

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• Ekman (1992) maintains that females and males experience similar emotions—that there is a set of universal emotions (i.e., basic emotions) that generalize

across the sexes and across cultures: happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, anger, and disgust.

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Ekman and Friesen’s (1971) Universal Emotions

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• Nevertheless, some research suggests that females and males differ in the frequency and intensity with which they experience these and related emotions:

Simon and Nath (2004)

Asked respondents how many days in the previous week they experienced a variety of positive and negative emotions.

Found sex differences in the frequency with which positive and negative emotions were experienced. Social status and parental status accounted for the sex differences.

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Mean Emotional Frequency Scores for Females and Males (Simon & Nath, 2004)

Females Males pAll feelings 45.10 45.10 nsPositive feelings 25.56 28.30 <.005Negative feelings 18.55 16.80 <.05Calm feelings 13.35 14.01 <.05Excitement 13.20 14.29 <.005Anxiety 8.13 7.22 .01Sadness 4.74 3.73 <.001Anger 4.66 4.75 nsShame 1.02 1.11 ns

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Diener, Sandvik, and Larsen (1985)

Asked participants to complete two measures of affect intensity: the Affect Intensity Measure and the General Behavior Inventory. The measures assess the intensity with which emotions, in general, are experienced.

Found sex differences in the intensity with which emotions were experienced. Significant effects for age also emerged.

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Mean Scores for Affect Intensity (Diener, Sandvik, & Larsen, 1985)

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Fischer et al. (2004)

Recruited participants from 37 countries: Austria, Botswana, Bulgaria, China, El Salvador, Finland, Honduras, India, Japan, Nigeria, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland, US, Venezuela, Zambia.

Asked participants to report the intensity with which they experienced “powerful” emotions (i.e., anger, disgust) and “powerless” (i.e., fear, shame, sadness, guilt) emotions.

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Found sex differences in the intensity with which powerless emotions were experienced, but no sex differences in the intensity with which powerful emotions were experienced.

• The studies considered thus far employed retrospective measures of emotional experience. In contrast to these studies, research using “online” measures suggest minimal sex differences in emotional experience:

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Larson and Pleck (1999)

Asked participants to record their emotional experiences using electronic pagers.

Found no sex differences in the frequency with which positive and negative emotions were experienced. Attributed findings from studies using retrospective measures to sex differences in the encoding of emotion.

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Frequencies of Positive and Negative Emotion Reported by Females and Males Using Online Measures

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Intelligence, Cognitive Abilities and Emotion:

2. Are there sex differences in emotional experience?

1. Do females and males differ in their cognitive abilities? (continued)