How Well Can You Read Emotions?

Eyes may be the ‘windows to the soul,’ but depending on who’s reading them, they might tell very different stories.

A new study in the UK found that women tend to be more perceptive than men when determining another person’s emotion based only on their eyes and eyebrows, especially when it comes to reading signs of vulnerability.

Men, however, were found to excel at detecting emotions related to lust and anger – and for both genders, researchers say the ability gets better with age.

In the study, the researchers surveyed a total of 2000 men and women in the UK.

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Participants were shown pairs of eyes and eyebrows and asked to choose the correct term that describes which emotion that person is conveying.

Overall, women were found to be slightly better at reading other people, with two-thirds of women in the survey correctly recognizing 5 or more emotions.

Only 56 percent of men were able to do this.

The researchers also found that women were more confident in their ability to read emotions, with half reporting that they were either ‘slightly better’ or ‘much better’ at doing so than their friends and family, while only 44 percent of men said the same.

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