Approximate reading time: 12 minutes

The short answer: No.

Dr J’s Story: Part 2: Challenging Stereotypes: My Journey Through the Emotional Landscape of Men and Women

Now I will return to my opening story about witnessing the stereotyping that women are more emotional than men — a stereotype that is mostly false and harmful to both women and men. Because I was driven by a deep commitment to fairness, social justice, and scientific rigour, I wanted to put this stereotype to a scientific test for both my Master’s (McFarlane, Martin, & Williams, 1988) and Ph.D. research (McFarlane, & Williams, (1990). I was curious to discover whether I would confirm or disconfirm the above stereotype if I measured women’s and men’s moods each day.

My research career began when I partnered with Dr. Carol Martin and Dr. Tannis MacBeth at UBC to conduct a study of 27 women and 15 men for 70 days. None of the participants knew the purpose of the study, which was to record their moods daily so we could look for menstrual and weekly patterns. We asked participants to graph their moods at the same time each day using a mood grid (Russell, et al. 1989).

Moods over the menstrual cycle. Our findings from this initial study were revealing: contrary to popular belief, women’s moods, on average, fluctuated less over the menstrual cycle than over the days of the week (McFarlane, Martin, Williams, 1988). Women, on average, did not experience statistically significant emotional changes according to menstrual cycle. In marked contrast, they remembered experiencing premenstrual and menstrual emotional lows and an after menstruation high as compared with other phases of the menstrual cycle. Apparently these women were influenced by the ill-founded stereotype of ‘women are emotional before their periods.’

Moods over the day of the week cycle. Overall, women and men experienced significant weekly highs on Fridays and Saturdays and slightly low moods at the beginning of the week relative to other days of the week. We found that, on average, women were not statistically more emotional than men. When asked to remember the pattern of their moods over the 70 days of the study, both women and men recalled weekend highs relative to other days of the week. (McFarlane, Martin & Williams, 1988). Apparently the “Hurray, at last it’s Friday!” stereotype is well-founded in evidence.

But what if our sample wasn’t large enough or we did not study participants long enough  to find stereotypical mood patterns? To answer that concern, for my Ph.D. under the supervision of Dr. Tannis MacBeth, we recruited 60 women and 10 men (more than double the sample size) from the UBC community and studied them for approximately 90 days (20 days longer than our previous study). Our results were strikingly similar to our previous study; we found that mood fluctuations by day of the week were common and similar among both men and women. When examining day-to-day reports, women were not more emotional than men. In addition, women, on average did not show premenstrual emotional lows in their day-by-day reports. This result challenged the stereotype of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) as a predominant factor in these women’s mood changes (Motherwell McFarlane, & MacBeth Williams, 1994) (To clarify, women with PMS were not specifically recruited into our study nor did we observe any PMS patterns. This does not invalidate PMS as a clinically-valid experience, however).

However, when it came to remembering their moods, both men and women exaggerated the highs and lows of their past moods, aligning their recollections with common stereotypes rather than their actual experiences. This was particularly evident in women’s recollections of their menstrual cycles, where they reported mood dips that were not supported by day-to-day reports.

It turns out that my hunch when I was growing up, that women are not more emotional than men, was validated by my Master’s and Ph.D.’s rigorously conducted studies. The evidence revealed the critical role of empirical research in debunking societal myths, highlighting a discrepancy between actual emotional experiences and retrospective memories swayed by stereotypes.

As first-year psychology students embarking on your academic journey, I invite you to reflect on what you are observing in your life today. Do you hear any claims that are possibly a result of ill-founded stereotypes or popular myths that you would want to put to the test? I hope that sharing my personal observations and research story will empower you to contribute to scientifically sound approaches to understanding the psychology of human emotions and other experiences.

Conclusion

The goal of this chapter was to explore the science behind emotions and their impact on personal and social life. In this chapter, we talked about how we feel and why it matters. We started by looking at the difference between emotions (like happiness or anger), feelings (what you sense inside when you’re emotional), moods (how you feel over time), meta-moods (how you think about your feelings), and emo-diversity (range in intensity and types of emotions). This helps us understand ourselves better and talk about our feelings more clearly. This is important information that helps us think about our lives. In addition, knowing about different emotions and how complex they are makes us better at understanding and getting along with people from different backgrounds.

We also looked at how our bodies and brains play a big part in our emotions. For example, we studied the role of the amygdala and hippocampus in our emotional experiences. We introduced how Traditional Chinese Medicine links emotions and our mental health with our bodies organs and the elements of Nature. We also explored emotional geographies and learned how our emotions can be anchored outside of our physical bodies in a memorable song, sentimental object, or even a place in nature. We also learned about how we show our emotions without speaking, like through facial expressions, body language, and even emojis when we text. Understanding all these things is key to getting why we feel the way we do and how we can share those feelings with others, even when it’s hard to put them into words.

Emotional experiences can be complicated. Have you ever found yourself inexplicably crying at a commercial or after a kind gesture from someone and wondered where all the feels came from? Have you ever laughed until you cried, but then, because you were crying, your tears opened up the door to some sad feelings? Have you ever felt a sudden rush of nostalgia from the smell of cooking or baking, bringing both warmth and a pang of sadness for times gone by? This mix of joy for the memory and sorrow for its passage illustrates how emotions can layer and get mixed together into a complex experience. Emotions always want to be in motion, moving us from one inner truth about how we feel to another. We can harm ourselves—or others—if we try to stop moving emotion or place pressure on ourselves—or others—to not cry.

The information about emotions in this chapter isn’t just for self-reflection, however. Have you ever finally understood someone else’s emotions (or misinterpreted them) and that significantly impacted your relationship (had an unexpected outcome)? Knowing the science of emotions can help us have better interactions with others. Being able to read facial expressions and body language is crucial, as it helps us pick up on what others are feeling, even when they don’t say it out loud. Have you ever noticed how your understanding of someone’s feelings changed after you paid closer attention to their non-verbal cues? For some of us, reading these non-verbal signals can be hard. Luckily, we can use strategies to help us work around this lack of emotional perception, such as focusing on tone of voice or asking open-ended questions to clarify feelings to get the emotional context we need. There are many ways to connect and communicate.

We also touched on how biases about emotions can lead to false beliefs, like the idea that one gender is more emotional than another. Recognising and challenging biases and assumptions is important if we are to improve our accuracy in understanding emotions. By applying what we’ve learned in this chapter, we can improve our ability to communicate and connect with a wide range of people, making our social world more inclusive and empathetic. How might you use your new understanding of emotions to grow deeper relationships with yourself, your friends, and family? How can you take what you have learned in this chapter and apply it in your future career?