Science has finally proven what we have long thought – women are better than men at reading people’s emotions. And we can pull off this magic trick just by looking at people’s eyes.
Researchers from around the world tested if there were genetic variants associated with cognitive empathy – that is, our ability to be able to understand another person’s emotional state just at a glance.
For the study, 90,000 people were shown different photographs of people’s eyes. They were then asked to say what they thought that person’s mood was. The results: women consistently outperformed men.
Katrina Grasby of Australia’s Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Queensland, says the results showed significant differences between females and males.
But the study did raise more questions. Namely, what it is about women that make them better at this than men?
“We don’t know what makes women better at reading emotions,” she says, adding, “The more interesting questions are, ‘Why do people differ in their ability to read emotions?’, ‘What are the processes that are occurring on a neurobiological level?’ and can the answers to these questions enlighten understanding of more complex psychological disorders?”
The study was led by the University of Cambridge and involved collaborators from Australia, France, the Netherlands, and the United States.