SEX-DIFFERENCES IN DISTRESS - REAL OR ARTIFACT

Women report greater distress than men, but do women genuinely experie nce greater distress, suggesting a heavier burden of hardship and cons traint? Or do they merely report the feelings in standard indexes more frequently ? Perhaps women discuss their emotions more freely. Or per haps the indexes tap ''feminine'' emotions such as depression rather t han ''masculine'' ones such as anger: This study analyzes data from a 1990 U.S, sample of 1,282 women and 749 men. Results show that men kee p emotions to themselves more than women, and that women express emoti ons more freely than men. However, these factors do not explain the ef fect of sex on reported levels of distress-an effect that remains sign ificant with adjustment for these factors. Our results also contradict the idea that the sex difference in distress would diminish if the in dexes of distress contained more items that tap anger. Adjusting for e motional reserve and expressiveness, women experience anger more often than men, as they do sadness, anxiety, malaise, and aches. In fact, b eing female has twice the effect on the frequency of anger that it has on the frequency of sadness. Women report feeling happy as often as m en, but adjusting for emotional expressiveness reveals a negative effe ct of being female on happiness. Overall, women experience distress ab out 30 percent more often than men. We discuss the possibility that dr ug abuse and heavy drinking mask male distress, but find little eviden ce that those behaviors ameliorate distress. We conclude that women ge nuinely suffer more distress than men.