WOMEN are more emotionally sophisticated than men because of their biology.
In the contentious-statement stakes, this one has to be a winner. Some of us
might respond by resorting to facile saloon-bar generalisations. Others might
take refuge in smart comments such as 鈥渇eelings are subjective, they cannot be
measured scientifically鈥� or 鈥渢he statement is inherently sexist鈥� or 鈥渕en and
women are simply playing out the emotional roles thrust on them by society鈥�.
Psychologists Ruben and Raquel Gur, however, would have none of that. Chances
are, they would reach into their research files at the University of
Pennsylvania, pull out some photos of brains speckled with bright marks and say,
鈥淟ook, here it is鈥攃lear, biological evidence that men and women handle
emotions differently鈥�.
It wasn鈥檛 always so. Once, this husband and wife team, who have woven
academic careers out of studying what makes men and women tick emotionally,
would have argued their case with little or no reference to the human brain.
They would have pointed instead to a pile of psychological questionnaires,
analyses of marital conversations and studies of behaviour, all tending to
confirm the familiar emotional stereotypes: that women are likely to express and
feel emotions intensely while men bottle them up, that women are quicker to
notice and react to emotions in other people, and so on.
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The shift in focus to biology as a basis for certain behaviours has not been
without its difficulties. Heart rates, skin temperatures and all the other usual
measures of emotional physiology tend to move up or down the same way in men and
women experiencing similar emotions. And this prompts the inevitable question:
if emotional differences between the sexes really can be explained by biology,
where is the evidence?
Enter brain imaging. The Gurs and a growing band of other researchers are now
attempting to 鈥渕ap鈥� the emotional landscape of the brain using positron emission
tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), techniques
which can detect changes in neural activity. And what they are finding is that
the terrain is subtly different in men and women. The question is no longer are
there sex differences in emotional biology, but what do those differences mean
and at what stage in development do they arise.
Any theorising must contend with an important caveat and a script that strays
from the expected plot. In the case of some emotions, researchers see greater
differences in the brain scans between individuals of the same sex than between
the sexes. And the old idea that women are ruled by a dominant 鈥渆motional鈥� right
hemisphere while men are victims of a 鈥渞ational鈥� left hemisphere is crumbling.
The division of labour in the brain, it turns out, just isn鈥檛 that simple.
Crumbling, too, are worries about political correctness. 鈥淚t has become OK,
fashionable even, to talk about gender differences in brain activity,鈥� says
psychiatrist Mark George. In the case of emotions, George and a team from the
National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, helped set the ball
rolling a couple of years ago.
As part of a study attempting to understand what happens in the brain of a
person who is clinically depressed, the researchers asked healthy subjects to
recall happy events such as the birth of a child. Then they scanned their
brains. In both men and women, brain activity slumped in parts of the cortex
involved in planning and forethought, confirming what gurus (and purveyors of
alcohol) have long suspected鈥攈appiness is linked to an absence of
anxiety-inducing thoughts.
Sadness, by contrast, triggered bursts of extra brain activity in the NIMH
study. But these bursts were many times more intense in women than in men. Near
the front of the head, women鈥檚 brains lit up like a firework display when they
experienced grief or sadness. In men, it was all more muted.
The research could help to explain why women are twice as likely as men to
suffer from clinical depression. According to George, depression might be the
result of part of the brain鈥檚 emotional system 鈥渂urning out鈥�. Women may be more
likely to burn out in this way because their brains react so much more strongly
to sadness than men鈥檚.
More recently, the NIMH team has uncovered differences in the way male and
female brains manifest anger. When women are asked to recall life events that
made them angry, they produce an extra burst of brain activity not seen in men.
The burst is in a tiny structure called the septum in the brain鈥檚 primitive
limbic system, long regarded as vital to our emotional lives.
Tim Kimbrell, who now leads the NIMH project speculates that the differences
may be a result of the types of memories used to induce anger. Women鈥檚 extra
鈥渁nger burst鈥�, he says, could reflect their tendency to evoke anger with
thoughts about people, while men use memories of situations to work themselves
up.
There鈥檚 other evidence from brain imaging that what happens inside the brain
depends on how emotions are created. Drugs, memories and images designed to
evoke states of happiness, for example, all trigger slightly different changes
in brain activity. But a towering obstacle stands in the way of rationalising
these 鈥渟ubspecies鈥� of emotions: science has yet to come up with a technique for
actually measuring subjective feelings. Male anger might look different from
female anger in brain images, but does female anger 鈥渇eel鈥� different from male
anger? Do men and women even speak the same emotional language?
Fortunately, extracting medical mileage from the research doesn鈥檛 require
definitive answers. For example, a key problem in treating clinical depression
is predicting which patients are likely to respond to particular
antidepressants. Only 60 to 70 per cent of patients respond to the common drugs,
but at present there is no good way of identifying people unlikely to respond.
That could soon change: Kimbrell and his colleagues have found that the drugs
work in patients whose brain scans show severely depressed activity in the left
half of the frontal cortex, but not in those who show other neural 鈥渟ignatures鈥�
for depression.
In principle, the same kind of diagnosis by brain imaging could be extended
to other mood and anxiety disorders. One day, it might even lead to patients
being offered different drugs and treatments, depending on their sex. And if the
result is a better match of therapy to patient, it will be a welcome medical
advance.
But what about healthy men and women? Is there any benefit in showing that
they lead distinct emotional lives? Yes, says Ruben Gur: 鈥淭he more we understand
each other the more we can live together in harmony.鈥�
Some of the Gurs鈥� favourite brain images come from a study designed to test
the stereotype that men are poorer than women at reading emotions on faces. The
answer seems to be that they are. According to their verbal responses to slides
and photos, men and women are equally capable of recognising happy male or
female faces and sad male faces. But, when it comes to recognising sad female
faces, men detect only 70 per cent, compared with women鈥檚 90 per cent. And it
seems that men鈥檚 brains have to work harder, too. Throughout the experiment, the
Gurs鈥� male subjects showed a good deal more activity in their limbic systems
than the women.
Ruben Gur believes the difference in performance can be explained in
evolutionary terms, as the legacy from a time when large, strong males had no
need to detect sadness in females. Women, he says, should not be disappointed
when men fail to notice that they are sad鈥攎en simply don鈥檛 pick up the
facial cues.
Such views, of course, go down like a barrel of lead in most gender studies
departments. But the Gurs are undeterred. In another study they bring the twin
forces of Darwinism and brain imaging to bear on the emotional qualities of an
idle mind.
And, yes, say the Gurs, there are sex differences here as well. When men are
asked to think of nothing in particular, a part of the brain involved in the
primal fight or flight response lights up. But in women, the lights are more
likely to go on in the cingulate gyrus, a recently evolved region of the brain鈥檚
limbic system that controls complex expressions of emotions鈥攁n angry look,
rather than a punch, for example.
Ruben Gur concludes that our thoughts and emotions gravitate in different
directions depending on our sex. 鈥淢en,鈥� he speculates, 鈥渕ay have thoughts or
feelings that are more primeval.鈥�
Evolution, of course, is only one reason why some men might be better at
throwing punches than reading sad faces. Peer pressure, beer and football are
variables in the equation, too. As is social conditioning in infancy: it is
well-established that mothers display a wider range of emotions to their
daughters than to their sons. And however appealing it is to invoke evolutionary
Adams and Eves鈥攖he one the hunter in need of little emotional baggage, the
other the child carer in need of an emotionally sensitive
intellect鈥攁ttempts to squeeze scientific data into such moulds can readily
get out of hand.
Last year, for example, researchers at Yale University reported differences
in the way the brains of men and women process language. In one part of
the study, people tried to decide whether pairs of nonsense words rhyme. The
bottom line was that while men handle such tasks mainly in the left hemisphere,
women tend to use both halves of the brain. The researchers themselves drew no
conclusions about emotions. But one international weekly magazine was not so
restrained. The sex difference, it reported, was a sign that 鈥渨omen have better
intuition 鈥攑erhaps because they are in touch with the left brain鈥檚
rationality and the right鈥檚 emotions simultaneously鈥�.
This understanding of emotions has begun to look naive. The latest research
suggests that emotions are anything but confined to the right hemisphere.
Richard Davidson and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin at Madison
have identified regions in both brain hemispheres, mostly at the front of each,
that specialise in handling different types of emotions. And by measuring the
activity in such regions, says Davidson, you can make accurate predictions about
someone鈥檚 鈥渆motional style鈥濃�攂ut not necessarily their sex.
In Davidson鈥檚 scheme of things, activity on the left side of the brain is
linked to positive emotions such as happiness and amusement, while right brain
activity is linked to negative emotions such as sadness, fear and disgust. The
left brain 鈥渆ncourages鈥� us to be open and approach things, while the right
鈥渆ncourages鈥� us to withdraw. That means anxious, nervous types tend to have more
right and less left brain activity than happy-go-lucky enthusiasts. Sex
differences, by comparison, are much harder to detect, says Davidson.
And even when such differences do pop up in brain imaging expriments, one
must still ask why. Because of genes? Events in the womb? The adolescent rush of
hormones? Or perhaps at this level, the workings of our brains simply mirror
society鈥檚 expectations of us.
Could this be the reason why German women report experiencing no more fear
than German men, and Chinese men are more emotionally expressive that their
spouses?
Additional research by David Concar and Rosie Mestel