A History of Sex and Gender Differences in Emotion

Abstract

Emotions are relatively recent historic ‘discoveries’ inasmuch as the ways of understanding why we feel jealous, angry, happy, sad, euphoric or afraid in Western societies, are now informed almost entirely with reference to biological processes, located within individual bodies. A highly developed (and profitable) industry has sprung up, dedicated to studying the genesis of, and helping to manage, emotions and feelings (Illouz 2007), with much of the most influential research into the nature of emotions conducted in laboratories in the belief they can be objectively studied and measured through detached scientific methods. The most commonly invoked arguments, explaining how emotions come to be are therefore biological, psychological, physiological or neuro-chemical in nature and tend to be studied predominantly through these disciplines.