Gender Differences in Recognizing Other People’s Emotions

Psychological research shows that gender norms and socialization strongly influence how emotions are expressed and recognized. Men are more likely to suppress emotions, while women tend to express feelings more openly through facial expressions, gestures, posture, and speech. As a result, women generally show slightly higher accuracy both in expressing and recognizing emotions, especially joy, sadness, fear, and irritation, whereas men are more strongly associated with recognizing anger and dominance-related emotions. These differences become more noticeable with age, as overall emotion recognition accuracy declines, particularly after 65, with women still outperforming men.

A recent study by Vladimir Barabanshchikov and Ekaterina Suvorova examined gender differences in emotion recognition under realistic conditions using the Geneva Emotion Recognition Test. Unlike earlier research based mainly on static photographs, this study used short video clips showing multimodal, dynamic emotional expressions that included facial movements, body language, head and eye movements, and expressive vocal sounds. Ninety six participants equally divided by gender and age evaluated emotions expressed by male and female actors.

The results showed that women consistently recognized emotional states more accurately than men. On average, women demonstrated higher overall recognition accuracy across emotions, especially for amusement, surprise, and irritation. This advantage remained when participants evaluated emotions expressed by male actors and became even more pronounced when observing female actors. Women were particularly effective at recognizing emotions expressed by other women, suggesting a form of gender based perceptual attunement.

Age also played an important role. Men over 35 showed a noticeable decline in recognizing certain emotions such as amusement and anger, while no comparable age related decline was found among women. Gender and age effects were selective rather than universal, depending on the type of emotion, the actor’s gender, and the observer’s age. Importantly, in most cases emotional expressions were recognized similarly regardless of the actor’s gender, indicating that emotional expression styles are largely universal rather than strongly gender specific.

Overall, the study confirms that gender significantly influences emotion recognition, but not in a rigid or absolute way. Instead, it operates as a flexible system shaped by age, context, and interaction dynamics. Women generally show higher sensitivity to emotional cues, especially in complex, real world communication, while men’s recognition accuracy tends to decline earlier with age. These findings highlight the importance of considering both gender and age when studying emotional perception in everyday social interactions.