Gender Differences in Affective Ratings to Neutral Images and Their Relations to Socioemotional Difficulties
Open Access
- Author:
- Brodsky, Madeline
- Area of Honors:
- Biobehavioral Health
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Derek Spangler, Thesis Supervisor
Marie P Cross, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- gender differences
neutral stimuli
socioemotional difficulties
COVID-19 pandemic
pandemic disruption
affective emotional response
psychopathology - Abstract:
- Gender differences in emotion are multifaceted and have implications for mental health during global stressors such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous research has primarily examined how men and women differ in their emotional responses to emotionally evocative stimuli; however, emotional responses to neutral stimuli may be better predictors of well-being during stressors (e.g., pandemic). As such, the primary aim of the present study was to examine whether gender differences in affective ratings are stronger when affective ratings are made to neutral relative to threatening images. A secondary aim was to investigate whether there are gender differences in socioemotional difficulties during the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, the sample was recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), where the participant underwent a task that encompassed 90 trials that were grouped into three conditions. During each trial, participants were asked to rate their levels of fear and disgust to the stimuli presented. Participants also reported their degree of pandemic disruption: a measurement representing the socioemotional difficulties experienced by the participant due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Two 2x3 factorial mixed ANOVAs were run to examine the gender differences in the affective emotional ratings of all three conditions. One ANOVA assessed the degree of self-reported fear to all image types and the second ANOVA assessed the degree of self-reported disgust to all image types. An independent samples t-test was then run to assess the gender differences in pandemic disruption. The ANOVA tests revealed that, on average, men exhibit significantly greater fear and disgust to neutral images than women. The t-test revealed that there is no gender difference in pandemic disruption. These results suggest that the belief that women experience greater negative emotion than men may not be a universal phenomenon, and that certain biological, psychological, and social determinants could play a role in these unexpected results.