Are women more empathetic than men? Questionnaire and EEG estimations of sex/gender differences in empathic ability.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci
; 18(1)2023 02 28.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-36807483
The debate regarding whether women are more empathetic than men has broad scientific, social and clinical implications. However, previous independent questionnaires and brain imaging studies that tested different samples reported inconsistent results regarding sex/gender differences in empathic ability. We conducted three studies to investigate sex/gender differences in empathic ability using large-sample questionnaires and electroencephalography (EEG) measures. We showed that the estimation of empathic ability using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index questionnaire showed higher rating scores in women than in men in all studies. However, our EEG measures of empathy, indexed by both phase-locked and non-phased-locked neural responses to others' painful (vs neutral) facial expressions, support a null hypothesis of the sex/gender difference in empathic ability. In addition, we showed evidence that priming social expectations of women and men's ability to share and care about others' feelings eliminated the sex/gender difference in questionnaire measures of empathic ability. Our large-sample EEG results challenge the notion of women's superiority in empathy that is built based on subjective questionnaire measures that are sensitive to social desirability. Our findings indicate that whether the notion of women's superiority in empathic ability reflects a biological/social difference between women and men or a gender-role stereotype remains an open question.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Emotions
/
Empathy
Aspects:
Determinantes_sociais_saude
Limits:
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Language:
En
Journal:
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci
Year:
2023
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
China
Country of publication:
United kingdom