“Men do not cry, women yes, since they are more sensitive.”
These and other gender stereotypes have perpetrated the belief that women are more empathetic and loving than men not only towards their loved ones but also towards strangers.
By empathy we mean the ability to understand the emotions and point of view of another person and use this understanding to guide future action. This process involves the activation of complex functions on many levels, although neuroscience have taught us that it is part of the genetic equipment of our species and is probably one of the most powerful engines of evolution.
The components of empathy were identified for the first time, approaching a multidimensional vision, as a rule of feshbach. Empathy for Feshbach associates cognitive and emotional elements and consists of three components: the ability to decode the emotional states of others, the ability to assume the role and perspective of the other and the ability to respond affectively to the emotions experienced by others. The first two components are cognitive skills, while the third associates empathy with an emotional and emotional sphere.
In addition to the cognitive and emotional component, according to Hoffman, the empathic experience consists of a third factor: the motivational component. Feeling empathy for a person who is suffering, in fact, would represent a motivation to implement help behaviors and activate care and care conduct. The motivating effect depends on the fact that sharing the emotion of the other, protecting it, makes those who help a state of well -being, while the choice of not helping the other would bring with it a sense of guilt.
Obviously these processes mature with age and are influenced by the development environment and the reference culture. The ability to identify itself in others is given by biology, the effects of this ability are given by the culture (Tomasello, 2005).
The processes related to empathy therefore motivate prosocial behavior (for example, sharing, comfort and help) and the care of others, to inhibit aggression and to provide the foundations for a “cure ethics” (Gilligan 1982). Some studies therefore wanted to investigate the relationship between morality and empathy, since these complex processes activate the same brain circuits.
Some research shows that the regions of the brain that support morals share resources with circuits that control other skills, such as emotional salience, the understanding of mental states of others and decision -making processes.
The identification of care and loveness as important domains of morality has stimulated the interest in gender differences in prosocial behavior. According to gender socialization theorists (Gilligan, 1982; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974; Whiting & Edwards, 1988), the girls, more than the boys, are encouraged to manifest loving and care behaviors.
The process soon begins in life through specific gender practices by parents, other family members, peers, other adults and through institutional policies. For example, girls could be praised or encouraged to show concern and express sadness towards someone who suffers while the boys could be punished or derided for the same behaviors.
The impact of such gender experiences on prosocial behaviors accumulates and intensifies over time (Fabes et al., 1999). For this reason, many studies on empathy and moral consciousness have oriented themselves to detect gender differences, often confirming the prejudice that females are more capable of empathy and prosocial behaviors compared to males, however a very recent study (Baez et al., 2017) wanted to question the results of the studies conducted so far.
Two studies were built: the first, which proposed an experimental task that helix automatic responses to the pain of others, together with a task that stimulates a moral dilemma; In the second study, measures obtained from self-report questionnaires were added to the results derived from experiments. The results indicate that gender differences regarding empathy are not omnipresent; rather emerge in specific conditions. With the measurements relating to experimental tasks, the differences were minimal, while with the addition of self-report measures the gap between the genres was very visible.
As required by the authors, different services in experimental empathy tasks and self-report measures can reflect gender differences of how women and men want to appear or not. Even if there are no intrinsic differences in the levels of empathy between genres, women could assume that it is expected that they portray themselves as more empathetic, thus favoring the elevation of the scores to the self-report measures of empathic and prosocial behavior. Instead, men could refrain from describing themselves as loving and sensitive.
Therefore, the questions of self-report tools can induce answers influenced by the identification of participants with stereotypes. The women, in fact, could think that we expect from them a certain degree of empathy and morality that, if not present, could arouse judgment by the other and consequent sense of guilt, while for man it could be easier to accept this sense of guilt for a scarcely empathetic reaction since it would not be an expressly requested ability.
