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A social-cognitive model of human behavior offers a more parsimonious account of emotional expressivity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2009

Vivian Zayas
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-7601. vz29@cornell.edugg294@cornell.eduhttp://people.psych.cornell.edu/~pac_lab/
Joshua A. Tabak
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195. tabak@u.washington.edu
Gül Günaydýn
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-7601. vz29@cornell.edugg294@cornell.eduhttp://people.psych.cornell.edu/~pac_lab/
Jeanne M. Robertson
Affiliation:
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Idaho, Moscow, Moscow, Idaho, 83844-3051. jmrobertson@uidaho.edu

Abstract

According to socio-relational theory, men and women encountered different ecologies in their evolutionary past, and, as a result of different ancestral selection pressures, they developed different patterns of emotional expressivity that have persisted across cultures and large human evolutionary time scales. We question these assumptions, and propose that social-cognitive models of individual differences more parsimoniously account for sex differences in emotional expressivity.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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