Well-Being: Foundations of Hedonic Psychology

17. Gender Differences in Well-Being

17 Gender Differences in Well-Being Susan Nolen-Hoeksema and Cheryl L. Rusting This chapter reviews the evidence for gender differences in well-being and the major explanations for these gender differences that have been offered. Gender differences are consistently found in several moods and behaviors, including sadness, fear/anxiety , antisocial personality disorder and conduct disorder , and substance abuse and dependence. Gender differences are also found, although less consistently, in angry moods, everyday all!Jressive behavior, hostility , and positive moods. Explanations for these gender differences are quite diverse, and evidence for the various biological, personality, and social context explanations are reviewed. Although some explanations are better supported than others, most of them focus on negative moods and behaviors and cannot account for gender differences in positive mood. The chapter concludes with recommendations for future research examininggender differences in well-being. GENDER DIFFERENCES are commonly found in measures of psychological well-being. In this chapter, we review the evidence for gender differences in major psychopathology and everyday moods and behaviors. We review evidence for gender differences in both negative moods and disorders and positive moods and behaviors. We also note when gender differences are consistent across measurement methods, cultures, and age groups, and when they are not. Then we examine the evidence for the various biological, personality, and social context explanations that have been offered for these gender differences. We conclude by highlighting the explanations that have received the most empirical support and by making recommendations for future research. NEGATIVE MOODS AND RELATED BEHAVIORS Negative moods and behaviors can be divided into two categories: internalizing problems and externalizing problems. The internalizing psychopathologies include depression and anxiety disorders , and the everyday internalizing moods include sadness, fear or netvousness, and shame or guilt. The externalizing psychopathologies include inappropriate aggression and substance abuse, and the primary externalizing mood is anger. We will first consider gender differences in internalizing problems , then turn to gender differences in externalizing problems. Internalizing Disorders All of the studies of psychological disorders reviewed in this section use structured clinical interviews to determine the prevalence of disorders in random samples of the population. The structured clinical intetview is the most widely accepted method for measuring psychological disorders. Trained intetviewers administer a standard set of questions to respondents, and the respondents' answers are used to determine whether the respondent should be diagnosed with a disorder. The gender differences obtained in these studies also tend to be consistent with studies using other measurement methods, including self-reports and diagnoses of people seeking treatment. In the most recent and comprehensive nationwide study of mental disorders in the United States, women showed higher rates than men for all of the mood and anxiety disorders, with the exception of manic episodes (Kessler et al. 1994). Similar gender differences in depressive and anxiety disorders have been found in many previous studies (Nolen-Hoeksema 1995a; Yonkers and Girguis 1995). Although gender differences in mania are typically not found, there is some evidence for a gender difference among people with manicdepression (referred to as bipolar disorder in the DSM-IV) (American Psychiatric Association 1994). Women are more likely than men to have severe episodes of depression and milder episodes of mania, whereas men are more likely than women to have severe episodes of mania and milder episodes of depression (Nolen-Hoeksema 1995a). Thus, women's greater proneness to de- pression compared to men's obtains even in manic-depression. There is some cross-cultural variation in these gender differences, with fewer differences found in "less modern" cultures (Nolen-Hoeksema 1990). For example, in a study of the Old Order Amish of central Pennsylvania, who have a traditional eighteenth-century agrarian lifestyle focused around the church and family, the overall prevalence of depression was much lower than in the general U.S. population, and no gender differences in the prevalence of depression were found (Egeland and Hostetter 1983). Additionally, gender differences in depression are often smaller in magnitude in developing countries than in developed countries. Within the United States, the differences between ethnic and racial groups in the prevalence of internalizing disorders and the distribution of these disorders by gender vary from study to study (see Nolen-Hoeksema 1995a). Although most studies find that women are more prone to depression and anxiety across ethnic and racial groups, several studies find that this gender difference is smaller in ethnic minority groups than in Caucasians , in large part because ethnic minority men have higher rates of depression and anxiety than Caucasian men...