Gender, Emotion, and Socialization

Abstract

The discussion of gender differences in emotional processes is complex for two reasons. First, there are multiple processes involved in emotional functioning, including verbal, facial, and behavioral expressiveness; emotional experiences and awareness; the ability to recognize or decode emotions in others; physiological arousal; and the ability to regulate emotional experiences and expressions. Gender differences have been documented for some, but not all of these processes. Further, gender differences in many of these processes have been found to be inconsistent across personality, social, cultural, and situational variables, as well as task characteristics and the quality and intensity of specific emotions such as anger and happiness. This lack of consistency in gender differences is not surprising, considering the fact that emotions serve adaptive communicative and motivational functions. For example, expressing anger is functional in that it communicates, both to oneself as well as to others, that goals are not being met. It is also motivational in that it facilitates change on both interpersonal and intrapersonal levels. Because women and men are often socialized to have different roles, motives, goals, and self-schemas (caretaking roles, intimacy motives, and interdependent self-schemas for women; provider roles, control motives, and independent self-schemas for men; Cross & Madsen, 1997), gender differences should occur in emotional processes. However, gender differences should also fail to generalize broadly because motives and goals for individual women and men vary with the social context. Moreover, both women and men need to adapt to power and status imbalances between the two genders, in which men typically have higher power and status than do women (see Brody, 1999). Higher power is theoretically associated with emotions such as pride, guilt, and anger, whereas lower power is associated with emotions such as fear and shame. Recent research has supported some of these ideas (Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003), and indicates that power differentials, both in general as well in specific circumstances, may contribute to gender differences in emotional expressiveness. Gender differences also vary across contexts because both women and men have multiple identities that consist not only of gender, but also of such factors as age, social class, race, ethnicity, status, religion, sexual orientation, and professional and interpersonal roles (e.g., professor and parent) (Stewart & McDermott, 2004). These identities may interact and become more or less salient depending on the individuals’ values; the social setting, including the content and goals of the situation (e.g., political versus personal; Ethier & Deaux, 1994); and the multiple identities of the