Women aren't more emotional than men, new study finds

In their study, researchers followed 142 men and women for 75 days to learn more about their daily emotions, according to a U-M news release. The women were divided into four groups: one naturally cycling and three others using different forms of oral birth control.

Historically, women have been excluded from participating in research experiments in part due to the assumption that ovarian hormone fluctuations lead to variation, especially in emotion, that can't be experimentally controlled, according to the study's senior author, Adriene Beltz, U-M assistant professor of psychology.

Beltz and colleagues Alexander Weigard, U-M assistant professor of psychiatry, and Amy Loviska, a graduate student at Purdue University, aimed to prove if the justification was true.

The researchers detected fluctuations in emotions three different ways, and then compared the sexes. They found little-to-no differences between the men and the various groups of women, suggesting that men’s emotions fluctuate to the same extent as women’s do (although likely for different reasons).

"We also didn’t find meaningful differences between the groups of women, making clear that emotional highs and lows are due to many influences—not only hormones," she said in the news release. 

The researcher's findings provide "unique psychological data to show that the justifications for excluding women in the first place (because fluctuating ovarian hormones, and consequently emotions, confounded experiments) were misguided," Beltz said in the news release. 

Ultimately, the findings help dispel biases about what being "emotional" means to men vs. women. 

Read the full study here.