How People Treat Each Other Based on the Gender Stereotyping of Emotions

Lots of articles talk about various aspects of communication, but only one really catches my eye. The Gender Stereotyping of Emotions is an article pertaining to different emotions stereotypically associated with each sex. It also talks about adults' perception of babies' emotions based on these stereotypes. The article presents four studies that examine whether people endorse the common stereotypes about the way men, women and babies express themselves or if people instead see things through the eyes of their own personal beliefs (Plant, Hyde, Keltner, Devine, 2000).

In the studies that were conducted regarding the gender stereotyping of emotions, "women are believed to experience and express awe, embarrassment, fear, distress, happiness, guilt, sympathy, sadness, love surprise, shame, and shyness more frequently than men (Plant, Hyde, Keltner, Devine, 2000, p. 89). When adults interpreted both sexes negative emotions, the women seemed to be both angry and sad while the men just seemed to be angry. Plant, Hyde, Keltner and Devine also found that "men are believed to experience and express anger and pride more often than women" (Plant, Hyde, Keltner, Devine, 2000). Furthermore, the findings also indicate that, although people believe that there are gender differences for both the experience and expression of these emotions, the differences are much larger in what people express than in what they experience" (Plant, Hyde, Keltner, Devine, 2000).

Along with studying what each sex thinks about how the other expresses his or her emotions, the study examines the stereotypes society holds about the way people express their emotions in order to document and compare them to participant's personal beliefs. It found that participants' personal beliefs closely resemble the cultural stereotypes that men are believed to feel anger and pride more frequently than women and that women are believed to feel and show happiness, fear, love, sadness, and sympathy more often than men." (Plant, Hyde, Keltner, Devine, 2000).