Empathy

We also have shown that there are social, contextual, and cultural influences that may foster some of these observed behavioral and neural differences in affective empathy between males and females. Especially in adulthood it seems that males vary more than females in some aspects of emotional processing and altruistic behavior, suggesting that even though it appears that males express less empathy, their higher discrimination in targeting helping behavior supports the idea that males actually outperform females in their empathetic control. In fact, even in childhood, males appear to have more control over their empathy than females, because, although they are capable of empathy, they exhibit it less automatically. Indeed, examining the different contexts in which males and females differentially exhibit empathy can be quite insightful. For example, males, but not females, are more empathetic towards female targets and targets who they perceive as deserving of help. Females, in contrast, appear more indiscriminately empathetic. Although speculative, it is possible that these sex differences in empathy may be the consequence of different evolutionary selective pressures on males and females, in addition to females’ role as primary caretaker, with females exhibiting stronger links between emotional and cognitive empathy (Smith, 2006). For males, increased empathy specifically directed at females may have improved their chances of reproduction, as both sexes prefer mates that are more kind (Li et al., 2002), while decreased affective empathy directed at males may have been adaptive in competitive contexts (Galinsky et al., 2008), such as competing for mates.

See Also

• Male variability