It turns out men and women are actually equally good at showing and reading emotions—the "emotional woman" stereotype is a total myth.
March 13, 2026
Original Paper
Emotional women? Testing gender effects on emotion expression and recognition with genuine and dynamic emotion expressions
PsyArXiv · u7erj_v1
The Takeaway
While many studies using posed actors find small gender differences, this research used naturalistic, real-life expressions and found the gender gap completely disappeared. It suggests that our perceptions of 'emotional women' are driven more by social expectations and stereotypes than actual differences in cognitive ability.
From the abstract
Past research has suggested women are more emotionally expressive and perceptive, and this is typically endorsed as a belief shared by the public (Briton & Hall, 1995; Plant et al., 2000; Timmers et al., 2003). However, there is a growing literature of mixed results finding generally small effects of gender on expression and perception. Little research has used genuine expressions and perceptions to assess whether expression or perception of emotion in daily life differs by gender. In this study