Men have more difficulty than women in sharing bad news and negative information about themselves, according to scientists.
Men have a harder time than women telling bad news, according to a new study published in the journal Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. On the other hand, for positive information, no differences between the sexes.
Negative information little shared by men
To reach this conclusion, scientists from Carnegie Mellon Universityof the Bayes Business School and theBocconi University conducted three experiments with more than 1,000 participants of both sexes.
In the first, they had to declare the moments when they really wanted to share information and if, in the end, they had done so. Thus, researchers observed that men wanted and shared positive events (a promotion for example) as much as women. On the other hand, they were less inclined to report negative elements (for example, the promotion was granted to someone else).
In the second experiment, the scientists found that women were more satisfied with the frequency with which they shared information. In other words, they indulged more and were happy with it. The men were unable to do so and were therefore overall less satisfied. Finally, the researchers also observed that the desire to transmit news was different between the two sexes. He was stronger among the fairer sex.
Men more concerned about the views of others
“The era of social media and digital communication channels has enabled unprecedented levels of information sharing, which comes with a range of social and psychological consequences, explains Irene Scopelliti, one of the authors, in a communicated. Our results show that gender remains an important fault line when it comes to the desire and propensity to disclose negative information.“
But why do men have more difficulty speaking? The authors put forward a hypothesis: they would be more concerned about social perception. That is to say the image they project to others. Thus, men would tend to mainly share positive information about themselves to improve their reputation.
