HEAR YE, HEAR YE : NEW STUDY AFFIRMS THAT MEN CANNOT 'READ' WOMEN'S EMOTIONS

 

Men have just been handed the answer they have been seeking for so long: that they are not some insensitive bunglers, but that mother nature has somehow made them unable to sense what their partner is feeling, i.e., has made them blind and dumb to women's emotional states or their cause through no fault of their own.

Puns and wishful thinking aside, what we are talking about it here is the inability for men to 'read', and that's literal, what the woman's demeanor and facial expression tell them about their inner state.  That's because men's eyes seem to be unable to do the deciphering.  

What seems to be happening is that the area of the male brain that processes emotion does not activate as strongly when they look into a woman's eyes.  

That however, does not translate to other men.  Men seem to be able to decipher other men's feeling by looking at their eyes.  

The study also suggests that men have a hard time reading or guessing what women are thinking, besides feeling.  They also misinterpret certain behaviors to their favor.  For example friendliness is often interpreted as a come-on from a woman, even when the woman has no expressed or clear like for the man she is being friendly to.

In the study, men were asked to guess the emotion by looking at pictures of a woman in different emotional states.  What the study showed was that it took the men much longer to say what they thought, and that they often mistook the emotion.  

What seems to be at play then is the response of empathy.  Men seem to show more empathy toward other men's emotions, but not as much for women's emotions.   And the reasons for the difference are not yet clear.  

One theory so far that has been considered, has to do with evolutionary skills.  Men in antiquity were hunters and warriors.  It would have been fundamental for their amygdala to engage and let the brain develop skills that could read or divine another man's intentions or emotions in order to anticipate the other man's behavior, whereas the women's behavior or mood was not as crucial for survival, leading to a lesser response in the brain since foreseeing a woman's action was not as important.  

Source:  4.15.13 NBC news