Gender-Emotion Stereotypes Are Context Specific

Abstract

Previous research has documented that specificemotions are differentially associated with women andmen. For example, sadness and happiness arestereotypically associated with girls and women, whereas anger and pride are stereotypically associatedwith men. The present research qualifies these previousfindings by establishing that gender-emotion stereotypesare context specific. Twenty-four scenarios were developed that depicted a target personover-or underreacting to happy, sad, or angry events ineither an interpersonal or an achievement context.Thirty-three female and 44 male Caucasian undergraduates judged how characteristic these reactions werefor women and men. The results demonstrated thatoverreactions to happyand sad events were morecharacteristic of women in the interpersonal context,but were more characteristic of men in the achievementcontext. Overreactions to angry scenarios, however, weremore characteristic of men, regardless of context. Theimplications of the context-dependent nature of gender-emotion stereotypes for men and womenare discussed.