1. 1 Psychology 320: Gender Psychology Lecture 29

2. 2 Intelligence, Cognitive Abilities and Emotion: 2. Are there sex differences in emotional experience? 1. Do females and males differ in their cognitive abilities? (continued)

3. 3 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)

4. 4 Spatial Perception Rod and Frame Test Water Level Problem

5. 5 Mental Rotation

6. 6 Spatial Visualization Embedded Figures Paper Folding Embedded Figures

7. 7 Spatiotemporal Ability

8. 8 Spatial Location Memory

9. 9 Maps

10. 10  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.

11. 11 “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:

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

13. 13 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:

14. 14 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.

15. 15 Ekman and Friesen’s (1971) Universal Emotions

16. 16 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.

17. 17 Mean Emotional Frequency Scores for Females and Males (Simon & Nath, 2004) FemalesMalesp All feelings45.10 ns Positive feelings25.5628.30<.005 Negative feelings18.5516.80<.05 Calm feelings13.3514.01<.05 Excitement13.2014.29<.005 Anxiety8.137.22.01 Sadness4.743.73<.001 Anger4.664.75ns Shame1.021.11ns

18. 18 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.

19. 19 Mean Scores for Affect Intensity (Diener, Sandvik, & Larsen, 1985)

20. 20 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.

21. 21  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:

22. 22 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.

23. 23 Frequencies of Positive and Negative Emotion Reported by Females and Males Using Online Measures

24. 24 Intelligence, Cognitive Abilities and Emotion: 2. Are there sex differences in emotional experience? 1. Do females and males differ in their cognitive abilities? (continued)