Barking Up The Wrong Tree

This study says women are more easily offended than men. In turn, they perceive more of their own behavior as improper, requiring an apology:

Despite wide acceptance of the stereotype that women apologize more readily than men, there is little systematic evidence to support this stereotype or its supposed bases (e.g., men’s fragile egos). We designed two studies to examine whether gender differences in apology behavior exist and, if so, why. In Study 1, participants reported in daily diaries all offenses they committed or experienced and whether an apology had been offered. Women reported offering more apologies than men, but they also reported committing more offenses. There was no gender difference in the proportion of offenses that prompted apologies. This finding suggests that men apologize less frequently than women because they have a higher threshold for what constitutes offensive behavior. In Study 2, we tested this threshold hypothesis by asking participants to evaluate both imaginary and recalled offenses. As predicted, men rated the offenses as less severe than women did. These different ratings of severity predicted both judgments of whether an apology was deserved and actual apology behavior.

Source: “Why Women Apologize More Than Men, Gender Differences in Thresholds for Perceiving Offensive Behavior” from Psychological Science

Join 45K+ readers. Get a free weekly update via email here.

Related posts:

How to quickly and easily become a better person

Things you didn’t know about happiness

Things you didn’t know about negotiation, persuasion and influence

Follow @bakadesuyo

Inferences from faces can predict important real-world outcomes. But little is known about the stability of these effects. Here the authors find that inferences of power from photos of the faces of the managing partners of America’s top 100 law firms significantly corresponded to their success as leaders, as measured by the amounts of profits that their firms earned. More interesting, this relationship was also observed when judgments were made based on photos of the leaders taken from their undergraduate yearbooks, before they began their careers or entered law school. Facial cues to success may therefore be consistent across much of the lifespan (approximately 20–50 years).

Source: “Judgments of Power From College Yearbook Photos and Later Career Success” from Social Psychological and Personality Science

Related posts:

Does power make you hypocritical?

Is life more rewarding and stimulating for people with greater social status?

How to quickly and easily improve your life

Follow @bakadesuyo

This article uses data from the 1973-2006 General Social Survey to assess the interactive impact of race and gender on marital happiness over time. Findings indicate independent and significant effects for both variables, with Whites and husbands reporting greater marital happiness than Blacks and wives. Comparing four subgroups (White husbands, White wives, Black husbands, and Black wives), the authors find that White husbands report the highest levels of marital happiness whereas Black wives report the lowest. Assessment of trends from the 1970s to the 2000s reveals a convergence among the groups: Although White husbands consistently report the highest levels of marital happiness, there has been a steady decline in the gap between all four groups. Most notably, Black wives exhibit a significant increase in marital happiness relative to the other groups. Findings are discussed in the context of the changing structure and composition of families in contemporary U.S. society.

Source: “Trends in Marital Happiness by Gender and Race, 1973 to 2006″ from from Journal of Family Issues

Follow me on Twitter here or get updates via email here.

Related posts:

How to improve your relationship in 5 seconds

What you should look for in a marriage partner

What predicts cheating in a relationship?