Why Men Don’t Speak Their Minds

We all know the scene. John Wayne is off to fight some war or other. His wife begs him not to go. Sobbing, she cries, "John, I love you so much."

"Sorry," says John. "I’ve got a job to do." He may have strong emotions, but he won't express them. It isn't manly.

Actually, the truth may be that John can't talk about what he’s feeling. There is evidence that men’s brains are put together in a way that keeps them from putting emotions into words. Martin Safer, a psychologist at the Catholic University of America, thinks the problem may be that the brain’s two halves, or hemispheres, don’t talk to each other as easily in men as they do in women.

The brain’s hemispheres, though interdependent, have different specialties. The right hemisphere controls nonverbal activity and spatial perception; the left is in charge of language and speech. Both halves process emotions, but the right handles perception, while the left describes them with words.

Safer did an experiment to see whether emotional information entering just the right brain would make it over to the left. First, he showed test subjects a slide depicting an emotion-laden face. Then he flashed another, but directed this one only to the right brain.

To understand how he did this, look straight at a vertical line—the place where two walls meet is a good one. Anything you see to the left of the line is entering your right brain. Things on the right enter the left brain.

Safer found that when the second slide was projected toward the right brain, women were much better than men at telling whether or not it matched the emotion seen on the first. The implication: Emotional data that enter the right hemisphere of a man’s brain seem to stay there. In women the information travels more easily over to the left side, where it can find expression.

Is this because women’s brains are physically different? "Maybe," says Safer, "or maybe it’s cultural. Culture might even determine neural development."

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