Are men really from Mars and women from Venus?

            Gender differences in the realm of social interactions and the processing of emotions have been a strongly debated topic in recent decades. Their perceptions have been sources of jokes and stereotypes. Men are certainly different than women in a lot of ways. However, can we really conclude that men and women have differing levels of social and emotional skills starting already at birth? We should be cautious while making judgments of this sort, because gender differences in social and emotional skills in men and women are a tricky topic with no one right answer as of yet.

             In his article “Brain Differences Between Genders” published in Psychology Today, Gregory L. Jantz, Ph.D. states that women are predisposed to be more emotionally sensitive and perceptive than their male counterparts. He does urge to keep in mind that the research findings supporting his claim do not always apply, for there are always exceptions to rules. According to Dr. Jantz’s article, the main reason that accounts for this difference stems from the processing which occurs within the male and female brains. Males are said to utilize up to seven times more grey matter in their brains then do females, whose brains favor utilizing white matter. In fact, they are said to utilize up to ten times more white matter than do males. How does this affect emotional perception then? Grey matter areas in the human brain are localized centers for information-action processing, while white matter areas focus on networking, connecting the grey matter to other processing centers. This difference in men and women then is said cause females to be better able to multitask and pick up various sensory information from their surroundings and other people faster and more efficiently than men, whose brains are wired for more tunnel vision-like processing, focusing on a single task or stimuli. According to the article, what adds to the above is that, at birth, the female brain tends to have verbal processing centers in both hemispheres, while male brains have such a center on only one hemisphere. This causes females to use more words while describing emotions and to have a greater connectivity between word centers, memory and emotions.

It would then seem that females are more receptive to emotions, more expressive with their emotions, and perhaps therefore more empathetic. In her book Pink Brain Blue Brain, Dr. Lise Eliot warns us against such drastic conclusions. She points out that long-term, duplicated research shows that there are no significant differences between the way female and male babies respond to social and emotional cues. Differences in such responses develop significantly within a couple of months of infancy. Dr. Eliot hypotheses that the magnitude of said differences is not as much pre-determined as caused by how parents react to their babies’ emotional and social behaviors, as well as our preconceived notions of what a male and a female are like. This does not, however, mean that one gender or the other is significantly more empathetic or socially and emotionally capable as compared to the other. While it is true that females are more empathetic than males, we must take into account that the difference between empathy levels in both sexes is extremely small and highly influenced by the child’s environment and parenting. Dr. Eliot also points out that the small difference discussed above does not in any way influence the depth of the bond males and females form with their parents or in any other significant relationships.

This is an important topic, because even though males and females are indeed different when it comes to emotional and social responsiveness, we must be careful while formulating and justifying theories explaining those differences. They might be greatly blown out of proportion and used as a double standard for the expected and accepted behaviors of males and females in social settings. Therefore, while some differences exist between males and females and their emotional and social interactions, it must be remembered that a large part of the emotional behavioral development and responsiveness originates from parenting and the early learning environment of both genders.

References:

Eliot, Lise. Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps--and What We Can Do about It. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. Print.

Jantz, Gregory L. "Brain Differences Between Genders." Psychology Today. N.p., 27 Feb. 2014. Web. <http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hope-relationships/201402/brain-differences-between-genders>.