Much research has shown that women are more empathic than men. Yet, women and men are equally forgiving. However, it is not clear whether empathy is more important to forgiveness for men or for women.
Iacoboni: One of this paper's main contributions is that it lets us understand the mechanism that makes this difference in empathy between females and males. Females may be more empathic because they really understand your predicament, your emotional state. They feel it almost under their skin.
Research has suggested that women express emotions more frequently than men on average. Multiple researchers have found that women cry more frequently, and for longer durations than men at similar ages. The gender differences appear to peak in the most fertile years.
An empath is someone who feels more empathy than the average person. These people are usually more accurate in recognizing emotions by looking at another person's face. They are also more likely to recognize emotions earlier than other people and rate those emotions as being more intense.
Women are generally believed to be more forgiving than men, due to their personality traits such as agreeableness and empathy, and their valuing relationships (Miller et al., 2008).
Women are more forgiving than men in a relationship and marriage because women have feelings for others than men. A woman is very soft at heart and will always find reasons to forgive her partner no matter the nature of the offence, compared to a man who will still look at things rationally before he forgives.
But research also shows that women are more likely to experience intense positive emotions — such as joy and happiness — compared to men. So it seems that women's more intense positive emotions balance out their higher risk of depression.
A perhaps under-discussed reason for a lack of empathy for men is that it's protective to not feel too much for someone you may soon lose. And indeed men are more likely to be lost. For example, males come to be self-sacrificial.
Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of empathy and remorse, shallow affect, glibness, manipulation and callousness.
A common misconception is that we are born with differing levels of natural empathic 'ability' but research has now shown that empathy is a skill that we can hone and refine. Neurologically we are all born with a very similar ability to empathize, male and female, but our choice to use this ability varies greatly.
Worldwide, women appear to be statistically significantly more honest than men. Standard error was less than 1% for both cases.
Related. Research shows that females tend to have higher levels of empathy than males.
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is associated with an assortment of characteristics that undermine interpersonal functioning. A lack of empathy is often cited as the primary distinguishing feature of NPD.
A dark empath is a term that describes someone who exploits their ability to understand how other people think and feel. They can recognize another person's perspective while also showing signs of psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism.
Love Does Not Automatically Include Empathy
Based on these definitions and my own experience counseling couples, love does not necessarily include empathy. Think about how some divorced people may still love one another, but never could understand each other!
From an early age, men are conditioned to believe that expressing their feelings is out of character with the male identity. Doing so can ruin their image of being strong and stoic. Specifically, men are told that crying in front of other people will threaten their masculinity. The same can be said about mental health.
As neuroscientist Simon Baron-Cohen noted in his study of the male and female brains, women have brains “hardwired for empathy” whereas men lack this deeply engrained neurological trait. Whether made or born, a wide body of research supports the notion that women are more empathetic.
Renowned psychologists Daniel Goleman and Paul Ekman have identified three components of empathy: Cognitive, Emotional and Compassionate.
Women are more likely to experience intense positive emotions and express gratitude than men. Studies linked women's desire to contribute to positive change to greater joy, peace, and contentment. Women tend to prioritize the needs of others over their own.
For most internalizing disorders (e.g., major depression and eating disorders), women are more frequently affected (3, 4), whereas for externalizing disorders (e.g., substance abuse) men are more frequently affected. Mental health differences between women and men have been attributed to sex and gender differences.
Both sexes forgive similarly
Despite experiencing the different types of infidelity differently, men and women are about equally willing to forgive their partner. And the new findings show that the degree of forgiveness is not related to the type of infidelity.
Forgiveness can be a powerful means to healing, but it does not come naturally for both sexes. Men have a harder time forgiving than women do, according to new research. But that can change if men develop empathy toward an offender by seeing they may also be capable of similar actions.
“Women tend to recover faster because they know how attached they are to their partners, so the shock isn't as great,” says Brown. “The pain is still there, to be sure, but it typically doesn't last as long because women intuitively know what the magnitude of the loss will be if things don't work out.”
Research confirms that people in power have lower levels of empathy compared to those who lack power. Those in power are simply not that interested in those below them. They view themselves as different and above others. The way people with power view their surroundings is different too.
Empathy is learned behavior even though the capacity for it is inborn. The best way to think about empathy is an innate capacity that needs to be developed, and to see it as a detail in a larger picture.