Ej. Coats et Rs. Feldman, GENDER DIFFERENCES IN NONVERBAL CORRELATES OF SOCIAL-STATUS, Personality & social psychology bulletin, 22(10), 1996, pp. 1014-1022
Previous attempts to find the theoretically predicted association betw
een nonverbal communication skills and social status have been inconsi
stent, especially among adults. It was hypothesized that these inconsi
stencies were produced by a failure of earlier research to differentia
te the two genders and different emotions. Hypothesizing that various
emotions may be differentially important in male and female friendship
s, the current study investigated the ability of 146 men and women to
nonverbally communicate (encode) three emotions. Results showed that w
omen are better able to encode happiness and that men are better able
to encode anger Additionally, ability to encode happiness is correlate
d with the sociometric status of women, whereas ability to encode ange
r is correlated with the sociometric status of men. Together, these re
sults suggest that happiness and anger play different roles in the soc
ial lives of men and women.