Men and women show emotions in very different ways. Small but significant gender differences in emotion expressions have been reported for adults, with women showing greater emotional expressivity, especially for positive emotions and internalizing negative emotions such as sadness. Did you know 90% of the time men and women may be feeling the same emotions such as sadness or anger but are able to show it in many ways? Often, men are criticized for not “showing enough” emotion. Women on the other hand are the complete opposite, why is this? This is for several reasons, women may feel feeling such as safety, and reassurance when they open up, which makes women more vulnerable. Men show emotions in different ways, just not publicly, such as becoming numb, turning to alcohol and other things of such. This is because society has made men feel as if they are not supposed to show emotions. Women show emotions publicly, because society has made women feel like being very emotional is totally okay in public.
         For countless years, men have been told to “show more emotion” when it comes to topics such as grief or loss, happiness and even anger. “Feelings such as enthusiasm, nervousness or strength are often interpreted differently between the two genders.” Studies show that men and women can feel the exact same way but show their emotions in totally different ways in different events, such as times of loss and grief, a man may sit in silence while a woman is crying and while there’s nothing at all wrong with that, many people wonder why this is. Studies show that " Women are more prone to talk about what they are thinking and feeling, and to demonstrate how they are feeling with their tears, facial expressions, hand gestures, and body language. Many women seem to be more comfortable figuring out how they feel by talking through it.
Given this information we can begin to understand that comfortability may play a huge role as to why men may not open up with their emotions as much. “Men, generally speaking, tend to process their emotions inwardly. Many times, they don't know exactly how they feel, so they try to figure it out on their own...inside their head.” This information shows us that while women are way more comfortable sharing their feelings, most men are not.
Women and men both face multiple obstacles that may prevent them from opening. Research shows that men may not acknowledge the issue they’re having which makes them incapable of opening up, they have to know what’s wrong in order for them to be able to open up. If they do know what the problem is, it makes it impossible for them to open and show emotion. Majority of men in today’s society tend to brush whatever it is that is bothering them off. “Men are more solution-focused” this plays a big part in why men don’t open up as much so instead of men talking or opening up they tend to find solutions, and while some may be healthy others may not. Some men may choose drugs or alcohol as a coping mechanism and some other men may choose to do projects or do activities such as hiking, it’s like a numbing mechanism or a way to distract your mind. However once men are able to open up, the way they physically open up isn’t always negative, many men may feel some type of happiness or relief.
Now that we have a clear understanding on why men struggle with showing emotion, we can discuss why women are opposite in a way. For many years women have been looked at as emotionally unstable, however unlike men in many situations, women are better at showing emotion and opening. The biggest reasoning for women being able to be emotionally vulnerable is because they tend to feel a sense of comfort or understanding. Unlike men in a lot of situations women believe that speaking about issues is very important, it creates a sense of safety for them, “Knowing that she can talk to you about her feelings and emotions without fear of being laughed at, dismissed, or otherwise hurt makes her feel safe with you.” This explains why speaking about issues creates safety.
    Even though women are “good” or “strong” when it comes to opening up mentally, emotionally that’s not always the case when it comes to how they physically show emotions. Like men some women may turn to alcohol or drugs, some women break down and cry, some women completely break down, their body language may completely change. So while women are good at mentally opening up, are they physically good at it? Once women open up unlike men, they may feel a sense of relief in the beginning, but after women may feel a feeling of regret, or sadness or even like a burden. “The present study tested the emotional sensitivity hypothesis in a large communal sample. This hypothesis poses that women are not generally better in the detection of emotions on the face, but would be especially better in the perception of target emotions in low intensity and less prototypical emotion displays, whereas no or fewer gender differences would be found for highly intense and prototypical emotion displays.
Below I have added the procedures that happen to explain why men and women are both emotionally different as well as the materials they use and results they received.
“The study was part of a cooperation between Dutch television (NTR and VPRO) and two universities (University of Amsterdam and Delft University). Participants were recruited through science programs on television and on the website of the respective broadcasting companies. On the site the research was referred to as a study on social skills and a short description of the overall aim of the research was provided. Interested participants were directed to the questionnaire. Participants participated out of free choice. The study used a web-based tool, NetQ, to present the materials. Participants were first asked to fill in an informed consent form and some demographics. Then, they were presented with various facial expressions in counterbalanced ordering (counterbalance between subjects). Each face was presented as long as the subject wanted, and the subject could then rate the extent to which they thought each of the 6 emotions was present in the face. A 6-point rating scale ranging from 0 (not present) to 5 (strongly present) was used, reflecting a judgement of perceived intensity of each of the emotions. This resulted in six ratings for each of the 24 faces. The study took approximately 20 minutes. Subjects could also click the option ‘no emotion present’. “We included 6 emotions: happiness, anger, sadness, fear, surprise, and disgust. Each emotion was shown by 4 different models (2 male, 2 female), and thus each participant rated the intensity of six emotion labels for emotions expressed by 24 models (see S1 Instructions and Questionnaires). 
“We analyzed the data with SPSS, version 22. We first examined whether male and female participants were equally serious in their engagement in the task. Female participants were slightly more serious (M = 6.42, SE = .012) than male participants (M = 6.37; SE = .017), F (1, 5870) = 5.307, p = .021, η2 = .001. If we only select the condition for the human faces (and exclude the avatars and icons conditions), the difference becomes non-significant, F (1, 2053) = 2.113, p = .146.”(line
 
 
As a female, I have personally experienced situations where I or other individual females have showed more emotions in public while some men keep to themselves, over the summer one of my friends passed away, at her funeral more of her girl-friends including myself seemed to be more visibly upset, while her guy friends really weren’t visibly upset. The key word there is visibly. Just because women and men don’t visibly show the same emotions, doesn’t mean they aren’t feeling the exact same way.
 
 
With the research we have, we now have a better understanding of why men struggle to open up, and why women are more emotionally vulnerable and are able to open up. This also explains why men may not be able to open up but once they do, they may either have a good physical reaction afterwards or a bad reaction and vice versa with women.  Men show emotions in different ways, just not publicly, such as becoming numb, turning to alcohol and other things of such. This is because society has made men feel as if they are not supposed to show emotions. Women show emotions publicly, because society has made women feel like being very emotional is totally okay in public. Just because one gender shows emotion in a physical way, does not at all mean the two genders are not feeling the same!

 
Work Cited:
·      McAllister, Dawson. “Why Do Women Handle Emotions Differently than Men.” TheHopeLine.com, 26 July 2022, thehopeline.com/102-why-do-women-handle-emotions-differently-than-men/. 
·      Fischer, Agneta H, et al. “Gender Differences in Emotion Perception and Self-Reported Emotional Intelligence: A Test of the Emotion Sensitivity Hypothesis.” PloS One, Public Library of Science, 25 Jan. 2018, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5784910/. 
·      Byline: and Jared WadleyMichigan News. “Study Shows Men, Women Share Similar Emotional Highs and Lows.” The University Record, record.umich.edu/articles/study-shows-men-women-share-similar-emotional-highs-and-lows/. 
·      Lorin Harrott, GSCC Manager. “Why Do Women Always Want to Talk about Feelings?” Counseling for Men, guystuffcounseling.com/counseling-men-blog/why-do-women-always-want-to-talk-about-feelings.