Women better at processing emotions

MONTREAL, Oct. 22 (UPI) -- Women are better than men at processing auditory, visual and audiovisual emotions, researchers in Canada found.

Olivier Collignon of the University of Montreal and colleagues hired actors and actresses to simulate fear and disgust. Collignon, who also works as a researcher at the Universite catholique de Louvain's Institute of Neuroscience in Belgium, said as part of their study, the research team exposed subjects to bimodal stimuli or the facial expressions of live actors combined with recordings of human emotions.

Twenty-three men and 23 women, ages 18-43, were tested and none had any recorded history of neurological or psychiatric problems.

Study participants were asked to categorize quickly emotions they identified as fear or disgust. Emotions were based on auditory stimuli, visual stimuli, followed by compatible audio-visual stimuli and contradictory audio-visual stimuli -- i.e. a face that expressed fear with a voice that expressed disgust.

The study, published in the journal Neuropsychologia, found that women were superior in completing assessments and responded more quickly when emotions were portrayed by a female rather than a male actor. Compared to men, women were faster at processing facial and multi-sensory expressions.