Assignment of gender Issue in communication

1. Smiling
Several meta-analyses indicate that females
smile more than males (Hall et al., 2000;
LaFrance & Hecht, 2000; LaFrance, Hecht, &
Paluck, 2003). The effect size seems to be
moderate, in the d = -.40 range. The sex difference appears to be largest among teenagers
(LaFrance et al., 2003) and not consistent
among children (Kolaric & Galambos, 1995).
An interesting study of female and male yearbook pictures spanning kindergarten through
college showed that the sex difference in
smiling became significant by second grade,
peaked in fourth grade, and persisted through
college (Dodd, Russell, & Jenkins, 1999).
These findings are cross-sectional, however,
making it difficult to determine if the effect is
due to age or to differences in smiling across
the generations. When a portion of the students were followed over time, the same pattern of
results appeared suggesting that the
sex difference in smiling emerges over time.
Not all smiles are alike, however. Researchers have distinguished between more
genuine smiles (Duchenne smiles) and false
smiles (non-Duchenne smiles), which can be
observed by the movement of specific facial
muscles. When college students role-played
the position of job applicant, females engaged
in more of both kinds of smiles than males
(Woodzicka, 2008). Interestingly, females were
aware of non-Duchenne smiles, but were not
aware of Duchenne smiles. Women said that
they engaged in non-Duchenne smiling to conceal negative emotions, to show enthusiasm,
and to take up time so that they could come up
with a verbal response to a question.
There are several situational variables
that influence the sex difference in smiling.
First, the sex difference in smiling seems to be
limited to social settings and is especially large
when people know they are being observed
(LaFrance et al., 2003). Second, there is crosscultural variation in the sex difference, with the
largest sex difference appearing in Canada (d =
-.59) and the smallest sex difference appearing
in Britain (d = -.13; LaFrance et al., 2003). Finally, smiling seems to be more strongly correlated
with personality variables associated
with sex, such as sociability, nurturance, and
femininity, rather than sex per se (Hall, 1998).
Gazing

2. Gazing is a difficult nonverbal behavior to
interpret. In general, gazing is thought to
convey interest and attention; thus it is not
surprising that sex differences in gazing have
been found in the direction of women gazing
M07_HELG0185_04_SE_C07.indd 236 6
more than men. Furthermore, sex differences
in gazing (female more than male) are typically larger when the situation evaluated is a
friendly one. Yet, in other situations, gazing
can convey a different message, in particular, a message related to status. A high-status
person, for example, may gaze intently at the
person to whom she or he is speaking. To
confuse matters even more, sex differences in
gazing do not generalize to all other cultures.
For example, in Japan, it appears women
make less eye contact than men, especially
during interactions with other women. Eye
contact here may convey dominance.
Interpersonal Sensitivity
Interpersonal sensitivity (sometimes referred to
as decoding) is defined as correctly interpreting
and assessing others, including their nonverbal
behavior and their emotions. Females seem to
be more sensitive than males to nonverbal cues,
meaning they can more accurately interpret
the meaning of nonverbal behavior (Brody &
Hall, 2008; Rosip & Hall, 2004). Females are
better able to understand the meaning behind
nonverbal cues such as facial expression, vocal intonation, and body position. This finding seems
to generalize to people in other
countries, such as Malaysia, Japan, Hungary,
Mexico, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Israel
(Hall et al., 2000). A meta-analytic review of the
literature showed that females are better than
males at interpreting facial expressions at all
age groups examined—infants, children, and
adolescents (McClure, 2000). Furthermore, the
sex of the target does not make a difference in
decoding accuracy; that is, females are more accurate than males in decoding both women’s
and men’s emotions. The female advantage is
stronger for nonverbal facial behavior than for
nonverbal body movements or auditory cues.
Females are also more accurate in recalling
information about other people, regardless of
whether the information is female or male stereotypic (Hall & Mast, 2008).
One exception to females’ ability to accurately interpret other’s feelings and behavior is

3. deception. Females are not more accurate than
males at detecting deception unless language
is involved, in which case women are better
than men at detecting deception (Forrest &
Feldman, 2000). If females’ decoding ability
is related to their orientation toward relationships, it is not a surprise that females are not as
good as males at detecting deception. Detecting deception would not necessarily foster
relationship development, whereas accurately
interpreting another’s emotions certainly
would.
Encoding
The counterpart to understanding another’s
emotions is the ability to convey one’s own
emotions accurately. Encoding reflects the
capacity to convey emotions without intentionally doing so. Because emotional expressiveness is
central to the female gender role,
it is not surprising that women are better at
encoding than men (Hall et al., 2000). That is,
others are better able to judge the emotions of
a woman than of a man. Again, the difference
is larger when judging facial expressions than
vocal cues. It is not clear whether a sex difference in encoding occurs among children.
Touching
It is difficult to make a generalization about
sex comparisons in touch because there are
so many moderator variables, including the
nature of the touch and the context in which
it occurs. The sex composition of the dyad
is a strong determinant of touch. In an observational study of touch across a variety
of settings, women were significantly more
likely than men to receive touching, and there
was a trend for men to be more likely thanwomen to initiate touch (Major, Schmidlin, &
Williams, 1990). Both of these findings are
misleading, however, because touching was
best understood by considering both the sex
of the initiator and the sex of the recipient. As
shown in Figure 7.5a, there was greater crosssex than same-sex touch. Within cross-sex dyads,
males were more likely to touch females
than females were to touch males. Males initiated more touch—but only toward females.
Other contextual factors, such as age
and relationship status, have been investigated in regard to touch. In contrast to interactions
among adults, interactions among
children show greater same-sex than cross-sex
touch (see Figure 7.5b). Among children, it
appeared that females were more likely to initiate touch, but this was due to the high proportion
of touching in the female–female dyad

4. compared to the other three dyads. From preschool through high school, same-sex touch
is more common than cross-sex touch—
especially for females (Gallace & Spence,
2010). However, from college through adulthood, cross-sex touch is more common than
same-sex touch. In cross-sex touch among
adults, who initiates the touch may depend on
age. In an observational study of touch among
teenagers and adults, men initiated touch toward women among the younger group, but
women initiated touch toward men among
the older group (Hall & Veccia, 1990). In that
study, age is confounded with relationship
status, such that younger people have less developed relationships than older people. Thus,
men may initiate touch among the younger
people to indicate their control of a newly
formed relationship. Women may initiate
touch among the older people as an expression of the intimacy of the more developed
relationship. An evolutionary explanation for
this behavior is that men use touch to seduce
a woman into a sexual relationship during the
early stages, and women use touch to preserve
the intimacy of the relationship during the
later stages. One interesting arena in which to explore touch is sports. Here it is more acceptable
for men to touch one another. When
male baseball and female softball teams were
observed over 20 games, there were no sex
differences for the majority of the 32 kinds of
same-sex touch coded (Kneidinger, Maple,
& Tross, 2001). Among the sex differences
that did appear, they were typically in the
direction of females engaging in more
touching. Specifically, females were more
likely to engage in intimate forms of touch
with one another, such as group embraces.
The outcome of the event also influenced
sex differences in touch. After a positive
event, women and men were equally likely
to touch. However, after a negative event,
women were more likely than men to
touch—probably reflective of women conveying greater sympathy for one another.
Conduct your own observational study
of touch in Do Gender 7.3 to see what variables influence touch.
TAKE HOME POINTS
■ There are fairly robust sex differences in nonverbal
behavior.
■ Women smile more, gaze more, are better able to express an emotion, and are better able to
read another

5. person’s emotions.
■ The sex difference in touch depends on many factors,
including the target of the touch, the age of the participant, and the relationship between the two
people.
One reason findings are so variable is that touch has
many meanings; it can be used to indicate status or to
express intimacy.
LEADERSHIP AND
INFLUENCEABILITY
An important behavior that occurs in the context of social interactions is interpersonal influence.
Recall that one reason children play
with members of the same sex is that girls find
it difficult to influence boys. Does this difficulty hold up among adults? Are men more
influential than women, and thus more likely
to become leaders? Who is susceptible to influence? First, I review who is influenced and
then who is influential and likely to emerge as
a leader in groups. I discuss the different leadership styles and how female and male leaders
are perceived.
Who Is Influenced?
It turns out that dispositional characteristics do
not predict who is easily influenced as well as situational characteristics. Women may be more
easily influenced than men, but it is because
they find themselves in different situations than
those of men. People interact differently with
women than with men, and the interaction style
used with women leads to influence. This idea was shown in a now-classic
dyadic interaction study conducted by Carli
(1989). Men and women were placed in
same-sex or mixed-sex dyads and asked
to talk about an issue with which they disagreed. Participants’ opinions on lowering
the drinking age and providing free day care
for working parents were obtained prior to
creating the dyads so that disagreement on
the issue could be assured. The pair then
discussed the topic for 10 minutes. One of
the partners in each dyad was randomly assigned to try to persuade the partner to her
or his point of view. The discussion was videotaped and later coded for number of task
contributions (giving suggestions or opinions), agreements, disagreements, questions,
negative social behaviors (showing negative
affect), and positive social behaviors (showing positive affect; see Table 7.3 for examples
of codes). After the discussion, each member
of the dyad indicated privately what his or
her opinion was on the topic. The change in
opinion from before to after the discussion
was the measure of influence.
Neither task behavior nor positive social behavior was related to attitude change.

6. Disagreement was related to less attitude
change, or less influence. The only interaction style associated with greater influence
was agreement. People who interacted with
a partner who expressed at least some agreement were more likely to change their attitudes in the
direction of the partner than
people who interacted with a partner who
expressed complete disagreement.
At first glance, this may seem counterintuitive—agreement leads to more influence
and disagreement leads to less influence? We
are more receptive to the ideas of someone
who finds a way to agree with us; disagreement puts us on the defensive. Our intuition
is to disagree with someone to try to change
the person’s mind. When people were randomly assigned to the condition in which
they had to persuade their partners, they
used more disagreement, less agreement, and
more task behavior—but only with males,
not with females. Unfortunately, this is exactly opposite of the kind of behavior that
is persuasive. Thus, it is not surprising that
women and men were more successful in
persuading females than males; women and
men were more likely to agree with femalesThus women are not more easily influenced than
men due to some fundamental female trait, but due to the fact that people feel
more comfortable in interactions with women
and thus display more agreeable behavior.
Women are more easily influenced than men
because of the way people behave toward
women and men. People use ineffective influence strategies with men (e.g., disagreement)
but express agreement with women, and
agreement leads to influence. Figure 7.6 illustrates the process by which women come to be
more easily influenced than men.
Who Emerges as the Leader?
Male and female students view leadership
roles in organizations as equally desirable,
but women perceive that they are less likely
to attain these positions compared to men
(Killeen, Lopez-Zafra, & Eagly, 2006). A
meta-analysis of group interaction studies
evaluated who emerged as the leader in the
group (Eagly & Karau, 1991). Leadership
was measured by both objective indicators of
group participation as well as respondents’ reports of who appeared to be the group leader.
Across laboratory and field studies and across
both measures of leadership, men were more
likely than women to emerge as leaders. Men
contributed more to the group and were more
likely to be perceived and chosen as leaders.

7. The nature of the leadership role influenced
who emerged as a leader. Men were especially
likely to emerge as leaders when task leadership was needed (d = +.41). When the nature
of the task was not specified, men also were
more likely to emerge as leaders, but the effect was smaller (d = +.29). When social leadership
was necessary, there was a small effect
for women to be more likely to emerge as
leaders (d = -.18).
The meta-analytic review also showed
that the length of the interaction influenced
who emerged as a leader (Eagly & Karau,
1991). Males were more likely to emerge as
leaders when the group interaction lasted
less than 20 minutes (d = +.58), but there was
no sex difference if the group lasted longer
than one session (d = +.09). One reason that
men are presumed to be leaders is that being
male is associated with dominance, a trait
also characteristic of a leader. In an older
study, in which the personality trait of dominance was measured, males were chosen to
be the leader over females, regardless of who
was the dominant personality (Nyquist &
Spence, 1986). However, when the study was
replicated several years later and people were
given an opportunity to interact with one
another so that the personality trait of dominance could be revealed, the high-dominant
person was chosen to be leader regardless
of sex (Davis & Gilbert, 1989). Again, these
studies show we are more likely to rely ongender-role stereotypes or category-based
expectancies in the absence of other information about people. But once we obtain
more information, we are likely to use that
information when deciding how to behave