ABSTRACT
This chapter examines issues by: reviewing literature on the bases of sex differences in social skills and emotional communication, and offering new data that extend past research by investigating sex differences (and similarities) in a variety of social skills and communicative responses to anger, sadness, and jealousy. The two studies presented in the chapter focus on issues by examining sex differences in social skills and communicative responses to anger, sadness, and jealousy. Although sex differences only surfaced for two of the eight responses to sadness, the two that did emerge were generally consistent with past work on differential socialization and social skills. Other research suggests that women internalize their jealousy through the experience of intropunitive emotions such as anxiety, sadness, and confusion while also directing anger toward their partners and feeling betrayed. Moreover, in the present study and others, the effects sizes connected to significant sex differences in communicative responses to emotion are relatively small.
