People have always said that how men and women process emotions is not the same. Women have been characterized as both more communicative and more emotional than men. Now new evidence points to men and women having distinct neural responses to both positive and negative images. The thing to keep in mind is that our brains are programmable and flexible. How we condition them will change them. So it is still left to be decided how much of this study can be attributed to nature and how much to nurture.
For those who are not native English speakers, I have referred to a term – nature vs nurture – which simply means that the influences could be based on nature, our biology and what we were born with, or nurture, how we have been raised and conditioned.
How men and women process emotions differently
Women react more intensely to negative images than men, a difference that can be seen even when looking at their brains, a new study finds.
Researchers from University of Basel, whose study will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, found that women rated positive and negative images as more emotionally stimulating than men did, and that their brains were more active than men’s when viewing negative pictures.
Such findings seem to support a common perception that women are more emotionally sensitive than men “and provides evidence for gender differences on the neural level,” said lead author Annette Milnik of the University of Basel.