Sociological Scholarship on Gender Differences in Emotion and Emotional Well-Being in the United States: A Snapshot of the Field

Abstract

This article provides a brief overview of scholarship on gender differences in emotion and emotional well-being among adults in the United States, highlighting major substantive findings, methodological innovations, and theoretical developments that have emerged in the sociologies of emotion and mental health. Sociological research consistently finds that men report more frequent positive and less frequent negative feelings than women as well as gender differences in both the experience and expression of emotional distress. Sociologists attribute these gendered patterns of emotion to the larger social, economic, and cultural context surrounding women and men. Overall, by identifying macro- and meso-level social causes of microlevel emotional processes, sociologists have made significant contributions to knowledge about gender differences in emotion and emotional well-being in the US.

Keywords

emotion emotional distress emotional well-being gender mental health

One of the most perplexing social problems that has captured the attention of sociologists is the disparity in emotion and emotional well-being between men and women in the United States. Since the 1970s, sociologists of both emotion and mental health have developed sophisticated methodologies for capturing differences between men’s and women’s feelings and affective behavior as well as nuanced explanations of the gender gap in emotion and emotional well-being in the population. Although these two subfields of sociology have different theoretical traditions, they both emphasize the social structural, social psychological, and sociocultural roots of observed gender differences in subjectively experienced feelings and expressive behavior.

Sociologists argue that men’s and women’s emotions are socially shaped and influenced by the larger social, economic, and cultural context. They also argue that as a group, men enjoy more frequent positive emotions and higher levels of emotional well-being than women because of their relatively greater social and economic advantage in the workplace and family. Sociologists further argue that men’s and women’s feelings emerge in social interaction with others and that they often modify or “manage” their feelings and/or expressions in order to conform to cultural emotion norms. By identifying macro- and meso-level social causes of microlevel emotional processes, sociologists have made significant contributions to knowledge about gender differences in subjectively experienced feelings and expressive behavior.

This article provides a brief overview of sociological scholarship on gender differences in emotion and emotional well-being among adults in the US, highlighting major theoretical developments, methodological innovations, and substantive findings. Because they both provide important insight into this complex social problem, I discuss theory and research on gender differences in subjectively experienced feelings and expressive behavior from the sociologies of emotion and mental health. I conclude by pointing out an important gap in current knowledge and suggest directions for future research on differences in emotion and emotional well-being between and among women and men in the US. The reader should keep in mind that the purpose of this article is to provide a snapshot of the field rather than an exhaustive review of sociological insight into the relationship between gender, emotion and emotional well-being.

Theory and Research on Gender Differences in Emotion and Emotional Well-Being in the United States

Major Findings on the Gender Distribution of Subjectively Experienced Feelings and Expressive Behavior

A topic that has long preoccupied sociologists is the gender gap in emotion and emotional well-being among adults in the US. Since the 1970s, hundreds of studies based on surveys of nonclinical community and national samples find that women report more symptoms of depression than do men (see Rosenfield & Mouzon [2013] and Simon [in press] for recent reviews). These findings are based on symptom scales such as the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (Radoff, 1977) and the Symptom Checklist-90 (Derogatis & Cleary, 1977), which have high reliability and validity ingeneral population surveys. Depending on the study, respondents report how often in the past week, month, 6 months, or year they experienced somatic (e.g., appetite and sleep)problems as well as feelings of sadness, worthlessness, and hopelessness.

Findings for depressive symptoms are echoed in epidemiological studies of the incidence and prevalence of psychiatric disorders among adults living in the community over the same period of time (Dohrenwend & Dohrenwend, 1976; Kessler, 2013). This research indicates that women also have higher rates of anxiety and meet criteria for affective disorders at a rate that is double that of men (Kessler, 2003). These findings are based on valid and reliable measures such as those from the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (Kessler, 2013) in which trained interviewers assess respondents’ symptoms of recent and life-time mental disorders according to criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Computer algorithms translate these symptom responses into the presence or absence of recent and life-time psychiatric disorders. Psychologists report similar findings on the relationship between gender and depression in the US as well (e.g., Nolen-Hoeksema, 2001).

The female excess of depressed affect in the US is an intractable and highly complex social problem that has both personal and society-wide impacts. Not only is depression the leading cause of disease-related disability among women but it is associated with a host of other adverse social and economic consequences for themselves, their families, and their communities (World Health Organization, 2000). Given the enormity, complexity, and seriousness of this social problem, it is not surprising that sociologists of both emotion and mental health have developed compelling theories to explain the gender gap in depressed affect.

Recognizing that depression is only one dimension of emotional well-being, sociologists have begun assessing gender differences in the experience of a variety of everyday emotions. Paralleling findings for depression and anxiety, these studies (which tend to be based on national survey data such as the General Social Survey) find that women report more frequent feelings of sadness, anxiety, and anger than men. In contrast, men report more frequent feelings of happiness, excitement, and calm than women (Ross & Van Willigen, 1996; Simon & Lively, 2010; Simon & Nath, 2004; Stevenson & Wolfers, 2009; but see also Yang, 2008 for an exception). Research further reveals that when the frequency of both negative and positive emotions is included in a summary measure of emotional experience, there is no significant gender difference in the frequency of feelings (Simon & Nath, 2004). The latter finding is noteworthy because it belies widespread beliefs that have long been part of Americans’ emotion culture about women’s heightened emotionality and men’s emotional reserve or stoicism (Brody, 2001). Because most sociological research on mental health focuses on emotional distress rather than emotional well-being, studies that assess gender differences in the experience of a range of negative and positive feelings are a much needed addition to our understanding of gender differences in affect.

Although there is no evidence that women are more emotional than men in the US, there is evidence that they are more likely than their male counterparts to openly express their feelings. Studies of gender differences in coping with stressful life experiences find that in contrast to men who tend to have an inexpressive coping style and are more likely to control or suppress their feelings, women tend to have an expressive coping style and seek emotional support (Simon & Nath, 2004; Thoits, 1991). Though not yet explored, gender differences in emotional expressiveness may only apply to negative emotions. That is, it is possible that there is no gender difference in the expression of positive feelings—a topic that warrants future research.

Adding to these observations, research on mental health also finds that while women have higher rates of affective disorders (and their psychological corollaries of depressive symptoms), men have higher rates of antisocial personality and substance disorders (and their psychological corollaries of antisocial behavior and substance problems; Dohrenwend & Dohrenwend, 1976; Kessler, 2013). The National Comorbidity Survey Replication indicates that 29% of women and 18% of men suffer from depression sometime in their lives, whereas 35% of men and 18% of women abuse substances during their lifetime (Kessler, 2013). Interestingly, research on adolescent mental health echoes these findings for adults. By mid- to late adolescence, girls report more depressive symptoms and boys report more symptoms of substance problems (Hagan & Foster, 2003; Rosenfield, Lennon, & White, 2005). These gendered patterns of emotional distress have also been documented by psychologists (e.g., Nolen-Hoeksema, 2012).

On the basis of these findings, scholars have concluded while there are gender differences in the prevalence of specific types of mental health problems, there is no gender difference in the overall prevalence of mental health problems in the US. Females tend to express distress with internalizing problems such as depression, whereas males tend to express distress with externalizing problems including substance abuse. Sociologists have also developed several compelling explanations of these observed gender differences in emotion and emotional distress.

Sociological Theories about Gender Differences in Emotion and Emotional Well-Being

I noted earlier that even though there is overlap in scholarship on gender differences in emotion and emotional well-being conducted by sociologists of emotion and mental health, these two subfields have somewhat different theoretical traditions. I, therefore, first discuss hypotheses from the sociology of mental health and then discuss theories from the sociology of emotion.

Hypotheses about gender differences in mental health

Sociologists of mental health have developed three main hypotheses about gender differences in emotional well-being. The first is the exposure, the second is the vulnerability, and the third is the gendered-response hypothesis. These hypotheses differ with respect to their ideas about the etiology of women’s greater feelings of depression and other negative emotions—including the structure and meaning of their social roles, the personal resources they are able to mobilize in the face of life stress, and the ways in which they express emotional upset relative to men. The first two hypotheses are based on the stress process paradigm (Pearlin, 1989). The third hypothesis is more eclectic and draws on insights from the sociologies of mental health, gender, and emotion.

The exposure hypothesis: Women are more exposed than men to role-related stress

The exposure hypothesis argues that women’s social and economic disadvantage in the workplace and family exposes them to more eventful and chronic stress; exposure to stress, in turn, is emotionally upsetting and results in gender differences in distress. Some scholars focus on the persistence of gender inequality at the workplace in which the jobs women typically hold involve less personal control, have fewer opportunities for advancement, and are less well-paid compared to the jobs typically held by men. Studies find that these stressful job characteristics mediate the relationship between gender and depressed affect (Lennon, 1987; Rosenfield, 1989). Other scholars focus on the persistence of gender inequality in the family in which employed women continue to assume greater responsibility for nonpaid domestic work and family care than employed men. Studies show that role conflict and overload—more common among employed mothersthan employed fathers—help explain gender differences in depression (Lennon & Rosenfield, 1995; Simon, 1995). Hochschild (1989) was the first to document that employed women work a “second shift” of nonpaid work, which is stressful and distressing. Although the gender gap in time spent in paid and nonpaid work has narrowed over the past two decades (Bianchi, Robinson, & Milke, 2007), a recent study shows that multitasking, which is more common among employed mothers than employed fathers, is a continued source of stress, negative emotions, and depression for women (Offer & Schneider, 2011). Psychologists have developed a similar hypothesis about women’s greater exposure to stress (Barnett, Biener, & Baruch, 1987; Belle, 1982)

While the exposure hypothesis helps account for the gender gap in depression and other negative feelings, sociologists recognize that there is no single explanation of the gender disparity in this dimension of mental health. That is, structurally based gender inequality in the family and workplace is a necessary but not sufficient explanation of the female excess of negative affect. Sociologists have, therefore, developed the vulnerability hypothesis, which attributes gender inequality in mental health to the social psychology of inequality.

The vulnerability hypothesis: Women are more vulnerable than men to the impact of stress

The vulnerability hypothesis argues that as members of a socially disadvantaged group, women are not only more exposed to stress but also possess fewer personal resources that enhance emotional well-being as well as reduce (or buffer) the negative emotional impact of stressful life experiences (Kessler, 1979; Pearlin & Schooler, 1978; Thoits, 1982). According to this hypothesis, women’s presumed insufficient social support and coping resources render them more vulnerable than men to the deleterious emotional consequences of life stress. Women’s greater vulnerability (or stress reactivity), in turn, helps explain their more frequent feelings of depression and other negative emotions relative to men. Note that while the exposure hypothesis predicts that stress mediates the association between gender and mental health, the vulnerability hypothesis predicts that gender moderates the impact of stress on mental health.

Interestingly, research has produced mixed results with respect to gender differences in the possession of psychosocial resources. While women report a lower sense of mastery than do men, there is no gender difference in the availability of social support and coping efforts (see Thoits, 1995, for a review). Moreover, there is no support for the hypothesis that women are more vulnerable than men to the emotional impact of stress in general. Rather, studies show that women are more vulnerable to family-related stress and negative events that occur to others in their social network (Kessler & Mcleod, 1984; Pearlin & Lieberman, 1979). In contrast, men are more vulnerable to employment-related stress and negative events that occur to themselves (see Simon, in press, for a review). Scholars attribute these gendered patterns of vulnerability to several social factors, particularly gender socialization, which results in differences in the meaning and emotional significance of work and family role identities for the self-conceptions of women and men (Simon, 1995; Thoits, 1992).

Based on these and other findings, Aneshensel (1992) argues that gender differences in stress reactivity are highly specific and depend not only on the stressor involved but also on the mental health problem considered. She notes that because most studies of gender differences in emotional well-being are based on mental health problems that are more common among women (i.e., depression) and do not include those that are more common among men (e.g., substance abuse), they tend to overestimate female distress and vulnerability and underestimate men’s.

The gendered-response hypothesis: Men and women express emotional distress and respond to stress with different mental health problems

The third hypothesis is known as the gendered-response hypothesis because it argues that women are neither more distressed nor more vulnerable than men but that males and females express emotional upset and respond to stress with different types of mental health problems. Animated by Aneshensel’s (1992) seminal insights into the highly contingent nature of stress reactivity, researchers have been examining gender variation in the impact of a range of acute and chronic stressors on mental health problems found among both women and men.

Overall, there is substantial support for this hypothesis. An accumulating body of work based on national longitudinal data (including Hagan & Foster’s [2003] findings for adolescents in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health) reveals that the emotional impact of certain stressors does not differ for males and females when gendered expressions of distress are considered. For example, divorce and widowhood are associated with elevated symptoms of depression among women and substance problems among men (Simon, 2002; Umberson, Chen, House, Hopkins, & Slater, 1996; Williams, 2003). Because these gendered patterns of stress reactivity emerge in adolescence, sociologists have concluded that gender differences in emotional well-being in adulthood cannot be attributed solely to differences between men’s and women’s structural positions in the workplace and family and their psychosocial resources. These findings suggest that the socialization experiences of males and females may also be involved in gender differences in emotional distress—an argument that is consistent with psychological explanations of gender differences in the expression of distress (Brody, 2001; Nolen-Hoeksema, 2012).

Why do males and females express emotional distress with different problems?

There are currently two sociological explanations of why males and females express distress and respond to stress with different mental health problems. Drawing on theoretical insights from sociological social psychology and cognitive psychology, Rosenfield et al. (2005) attribute gendered expressions of distress to gender-differentiated self-schemas that develop in adolescence. She argues that gender socialization in childhood emphasizes the importance of others in females’ self-development and the importance of oneself in males’ self-development. The result is that women tend to develop an “other-focused” self while men tend to develop an “ego-focused” self. In her research on adolescents, Rosenfield finds that persons with other-focused schema (girls) are more likely to express distress with internalizing problems such as depression, whereas adolescents with self-focused schema (boys) are more likely to express distress with externalizing problems including substance problems. Rosenfield also shows that gender differences in self- and other-salience mediate gender differences in these expressions of emotional distress.

The second explanation of gendered expressions of distress focuses on emotional rather than cognitive processes. Drawing on Hochschild’s seminal theory about emotion management (1979, 1983), I attribute gendered expressions of distress to the emotion culture in the US, which includes norms about appropriate experience and expression of emotion for males and females (Caputo & Simon, 2013; Simon, 2002, 2007; Simon & Barrett, 2010; Simon & Nath, 2004). Because feelings of depression signal weakness to self and others (and weakness is a permissible personality characteristic for females but not for males in the US), it is a socially acceptable emotion for females but a sanctioned emotion for males. A consequence of gender-linked emotion socialization is that females learn to express emotional upset with internalizing emotional problems such as depression, while males learn to express distress with externalizing emotional problems such as substance abuse. Males’ higher rate of substance problems reflects their tendency to manage (i.e., suppress) culturally inappropriate feelings of depression with mood-altering substances in order to avoid being labeled “weak.”

In sum, sociological scholarship on mental health has enhanced our understanding of social structural, social psychological, and sociocultural factors that contribute to gender differences in emotion and emotional well-being among adults in the US. The exposure, vulnerability, and gendered-response hypotheses (and empirical work evaluating them) shed light on the etiology of gender differences in subjective feelings and expressive behavior. Theoretical insights from the sociology of emotion complement and expand insights from the sociology of mental health.

Theories about gender differences in emotion.

Cultural theories about emotion

Hochschild’s groundbreaking theory about emotion (1979, 1983) sheds light on the cultural roots of gender differences in subjective feelings and expressive behavior. Hochschild argues that societies contain emotion cultures, which include feeling and expression norms specifying the emotions individuals should (and should not) feel and express in particular situations and in general (see Smith-Lovin [1995] and Thoits [1989] for an elaboration). When people’s feelings and expressions depart from emotion norms, they often engage in emotion management, expression management, or both in order to create a culturally appropriate emotional response. As discussed earlier, Hochschild’s theory provides insight into why women in the US tend to express emotional upset with depression while men tend to suppress these feelings with mood-altering substances. These expressions of emotional distress are consistent with gendered norms and beliefs.

While Hochschild’s cultural theory helps explain gender differences in depression and substance problems, Kemper’s (1978) and Collins’s (2004) theories about structural influences on emotion are better suited for explaining gender differences in the experience of everyday emotions.

Structural theories about emotion

Kemper’s (1978) influential social interactional theory of emotion argues that status and power—two fundamental dimensions of social relationships—elicit certain emotions in social interaction when people’s relational status and power are unequal. Individuals with more status and power tend to experience more positive emotions (calm, excitement, and joy), whereas persons with less status and power experience more negative emotions (sadness, anxiety, and anger). Because unequal social interactions are ubiquitous in societies characterized by a high level of social inequality such as the US, these everyday feelings become enduring emotional states or moods of depression and happiness. When viewed through this theoretical lens, gender differences in negative and positive feelings reflect gender differences in status and power in social interactions, particularly in the family and workplace where gender inequality persists (see Ridgeway [2011] for a compelling explication of how gender inequality is maintained and reproduced over time).

Collins provocative theory about interaction rituals (2004) also argues that individuals’ structural location and subsequent social interactions affect their everyday or “transient” feelings (sadness, anger, excitement, and joy) as well as enduring moods (depression and happiness)—the latter of which he calls “emotional energy.” In social interactions comprised of status unequals, individuals with lower status tend to experience more negative transient emotions, which over time result in a degradation of emotional energy and feelings of depression. In contrast, persons with higher status tend to experience more positive transient emotions, which lead to heightened emotional energy and feelings of happiness. Because women in the US continue to have lower status in the workplace and family than men, they are more likely to experience frequent transient negative emotions, which over time reduce emotional energy and result in more frequent feelings of depression and lessfrequent feelings of happiness.

Although they emphasize somewhat different emotion processes, Kemper (1978) and Collins (2004) provide compelling explanations of why women report more negative feelings and men report more positive emotions in surveys. Women are more likely than men to experience unjust social interactions in the family and workplace. Incidentally, the emotion processes Kemper and Collins describe are illustrated in Hochschild’s qualitative studies of female airline attendants (1983) and wives in dual-earner families (1989), in which their feelings of sadness, anxiety, frustration, and anger from repeated unfair social interactions were ultimately transformed into depression. In a recent study, Lively and I (Simon & Lively, 2010) demonstrated that intense and persistent feelings of anger—more common among women than men—mediate the relationship between gender and depression.

Taken together, irrespective of whether they focus on the sociocultural, social structural, or social psychological roots of gender differences in emotion and emotional well-being, theoretical insights from the sociology of emotion complement and expand theoretical insights from the sociology of mental health. Men’s and women’s subjective feelings and expressive behavior emerge in ongoing social interaction with others and are shaped by their culture and structural positions in society.

Conclusions

In this article, I provided a brief overview of scholarship on gender differences in emotion and emotional well-being, highlighting major theoretical developments, methodological innovations, and substantive findings that have emerged from the sociologies of emotion and mental health since the 1970s to the present. Overall, sociologists have elucidated social structural, sociocultural, and social psychological determinants of gender differences in subjectively experienced feelings and expressive behavior among adults in the US. By doing so, they have made a significant contribution to knowledge about the deeply social influences on human emotion.

At the same time, there are still some important gaps in knowledge about the relationship between gender and emotion among adults in the US. Space limitations prevent me from discussing all of them, so I conclude with a brief discussion of one major knowledge gap.

We currently do not have a good understanding of the undoubtedly complex ways in which individuals’ gender interacts with their other major social statuses (e.g., their socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, nativity status, and sexual identity) to produce other variations in emotion and emotional well-being both between and among women and men. Although there are some notable exceptions (e.g., Rosenfield, 2012), by focusing on overall gender differences in the population, sociologists have not assessed the degree to which gender inequality interacts with other axes of social inequality to produce different gendered patterns of emotional experience and expressive behavior among minorities. In light of rapidly increasing diversity in the U.S. population, this is an imperative next step for sociological research on the relationship between gender, emotion, and emotional well-being. Indeed, our understanding of the significance of gender for subjectively experienced feelings and expressive behavior will be greatly enhanced by examining the intersection of gender with these other major social statuses. I feel confident that research on this topic will not only increase substantive knowledge but will also lead to expansions and refinements of sociological theories about gender differences in emotion and emotional well-being among adults in the US.

Footnotes

Author note:

I am grateful to Jim Russell for his invitation to collaborate on this special section of Emotion Review on the sociology of emotion as well as two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions on an early draft of this article. I also thank Lynn Smith-Lovin and Peggy Thoits for their work editing this special section and their helpful comments on my contribution to it.

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