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Women do smile more than men,
but when occupying similar work and social roles, the gender differences
in the rate of smiling disappear, a Yale researcher has found.
Also, there are large differences in the degree to which men smile
less than women depending on a person’s culture, ethnicity, age, or when
people think they are being observed, according to the study funded by
the National Science Foundation.
“It would be interesting for social psychologists and anthropologists
to look at these data because the wide cultural, ethnic and other
differences suggest that the sex difference is not something that is
hard-wired,” said Marianne LaFrance, professor of psychology at Yale and
senior author of the study published this month in the journal
Pyschological Bulletin.
“This is not a function of being male or female. Each culture
overlays men and women with rules about appropriate behaviour for men
and women.”
LaFrance and her co-authors, Elizabeth Paluck of Yale and Marvin
Hecht, a graduate student at the time, set out to examine every
available study that has been done on sex differences in smiling.
Ultimately, they looked at 186 research reports.
They found that women do smile more than men, but the difference is
modest. “The difference is there, but it’s not whopping,” LaFrance said.
“Indeed, there are studies that find just the opposite.”
Also, the rate at which men and women differ in how much they smile
is greater in the United States and Canada than in other parts of the
world, like England and Australia. In the United States, there is a
greater sex difference among Caucasians in smiling, but this difference
virtually disappears among African-Americans.In terms of age
differences, teens show the largest sex difference in smiling.
After that, the sexes converge on their smile rates. “We don’t know
why it maxes out among young adults,” LaFrance said.
“One possibility is that that is the age when the sexes are supposed
to be maximally different from each other, for procreation or social
purposes. After that, it’s not so important.”
The researchers also found that the largest sex differences in
smiling occurred when men and women thought they were being observed.
They smiled more similarly when they thought no one was looking.
“The logic here is when people know their behaviour is being
monitored, they more closely adhere to the norms for appropriate
behaviour for their gender,” LaFrance said. “People are at their
gendered best when people are looking.”
Men and women also smile about the same amount when they are in the
same position in terms of power, occupation or social role. Here,
LaFrance surmises that the sex differences are overridden by smile norms
for the role one is in, rather than with the sex one is.
However, when there is tension in the air, women more often than men
try to diffuse it with a smile. “Women do what we call ‘emotion work’
and one of the best ways to do this is to smile to soothe hurt feelings,
to restore harmony,” LaFrance said.
– Science Daily
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