Women are emotional, true. But according to a recent study, men may very well be more emotional than their female counterparts. The only difference is men hide it better.
In this study, conducted by neurologists at Mindlab, men are actually much more sensitive than women when it comes to being presented with emotional stimuli.
The study took a group of 15 men and 15 women, sat them down, had them watch a series of videos you would expect to trigger emotional responses and measured their responses via skin conductance electrodes.
The content was categorized into four areas: blissful, exciting, heartwarming and funny.
The results showed that men had stronger emotional reactions to each of these areas. When it came to the heartwarming content, men responded twice as much as did women.
When asked to rate their emotional response to the content, women stated that they were much more emotional than the test results showed, while men said they were much less emotional than they actually were.
In a separate survey conducted by the same company, 67 percent of these men later went on to admit they actually felt more emotional than they let on.
While the study was conducted on a small group of individuals and those individuals were all parents, one cannot say for certain how well this applies to all men, however, it does make sense that guys are more emotional than women.
Here's why:
Men have been taught to keep their emotions to themselves.
I'm sure there are some men out there who were raised in a household that praised emotional honesty.
But even such individuals had to have stepped out into the world and realized the rest of society and the culture we've built over the centuries prefers men to keep their emotions to themselves.
We were taught to believe sensitivity is synonymous with weakness, which is exactly the opposite if you think about it.
Sensing more, feeling more, experiencing more, understanding more, interacting with the world more, that is a strength, an advantage — not something to be ashamed of.
Boys are taught to be ashamed of the emotions they experience, so they grow into men who are both emotionally confused and in denial.
Emotions aren't meant to be suppressed. They don't necessarily need to be paraded for everyone else to see — even though there isn't anything intrinsically wrong with that — but they ought to be accepted and understood. Otherwise, the build up can kill you.
Men's egos tower women's egos.
Whether this is biological or simply learned, I'm not certain. Although, I'd wager it's mainly the latter.
Regardless of why the world is the way it is, the fact is that men have bigger egos than women.
They are allowed bigger egos than women because, in part, they have more opportunities than women.
Men can accomplish more with less effort because the world already expects them to do so — the systems we have in place are set up for them to do so.
The issue is with the more opportunity you have, the higher your hopes and the grander your dreams.
This increases your expectations as well as the pressure you put on yourself to match those expectations.
With higher goals and expectations come bigger failures and more intense disappointments. In part, men are more emotional than women because they fail more often.
Men aren't always accepted when they're being emotional
For years and years, men have gotten bashed, personally and in the media, for being heartless, for not being understanding of women and the way they feel. Many women will still use this as an argument squasher.
The truth is, men didn't allow themselves to understand the way the women they loved felt because they didn't understand why women weren't willing to follow the rules they were taught to follow.
Don't cry. Don't pout. Don't complain. Be a man — an emotionless, stubborn man. Again, not all men but most, I'm afraid.
Men were taught emotions are a sign of weakness. Women were taught the opposite. So what are you left with?
Men who believe women are weak because they're emotional and women who are pissed off they're seen as being weak for something they were taught to embrace.
Girls care for fake babies they call dolls. They play house, have tea parties (again, this has almost certainly greatly changed now), while men race, play violent video games, wrestle, etc…
Then, the age of the hipster came along, and all of a sudden, the gender roles began to dissolve.
Men are becoming more accepting of the emotions they are experiencing, as well as more open about them, while women are becoming more independent, more sexually open and more emotionally reserved.
Eventually, once we stop acting to impress, we'll find a nice balance — and hopefully say goodbye to the man bun.