The study, published in the December issue of the journal Emotion,<\/em> explored men and women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s responses to pictures of people expressing their emotions to work out what side of their brains elicited a response.<\/p>\n Lead author on the study, Dr Qazi Rahman, from Queen Mary\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, said they found that men, in particular, use the right side of their brains to recognise emotion in other male faces.<\/p>\n He said: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When men were showed expressions of happiness, sadness and anger in other men, they responded with the right side of the brain whereas they used both sides of their brains more or less equally when looking at emotions in women’s faces<\/strong>.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n The scientists showed almost 100 volunteers a range of different pictures of facial expressions, each had half a neutral expression and half an emotional expression.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There was a very strong response from men when they saw other men expressing their emotion. The strongest response was when men were shown angry and surprised male faces. This could be because men might be more wired to notice expressions indicating vigilance or threat in other men compared with women,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dr Rahman said.<\/p>\n Expressions indicating vigilance or threat are known as \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcpop out\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 emotions. The scientists anticipated a strong response to these types of emotions so the fact that the men\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s response to expressions of surprise was strong, was not unexpected.<\/p>\n Dr Rahman said: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We were a bit confused when men saw other male\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s expressions of disgust, another \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcpop out\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 emotion, that it did not elicit a strong response. It may be that disgust is a less important cue for men than surprise and could indicate \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwithdrawal\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 which men may ignore.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n The research challenges the idea of simplistic sex differences in the brain, showing they are influenced by features of both the observer and the person being observed (in this case, sex of face and emotion displayed). The findings also challenge two theories explaining how emotions are organised in the brain, as Dr Rahman explains.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153One theory argues that the right hemisphere of the brain deals with all emotions,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The other states that positive emotions are processed by the right hemisphere and negative emotions by the left. Our work suggest both theories are over-simplifications because they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcthe details\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 into account, such as of the sex of the person who is showing that emotion.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Queen Mary, University of London press release: Men have a stronger response to seeing other men show emotion than when women show emotion, according to new research from… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,6],"tags":[42,46,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions\/285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/AngryMen.jpg\" "\\"anger\\"")
Men have a stronger response to seeing other men show emotion than when women show emotion<\/strong>, according to new research from Queen Mary, University of London.<\/p>\n