Gender and Teasing

[differenceblog]

Keltner et al (1998) hypothesized that women would have more negative emotions associated with teasing than men, whether they were the aggressor or the target. While they tested this hypothesis only within heterosexual, college-aged romantic relationships, they did find support for this hypothesis, and also found that women were more upset by

Comments

[astrogeek01]

There was/is so much rampant teasing in my family (immediate & extended) that it doesn't bug me at all, as long as it's not mean-spirited.

[dabunny]

as long as it's not mean-spirited.

I think that brings up the core of the stereotypical gender difference here. There's very little in the way of objective evidence when it comes to the "spirit" behind something like teasing. What is more interesting to me from studies of this type, is a comparison across gender groups on the perceived intent of the teasing. Are women or men more likely to attribute mean-spiritedness to their teaser? In my experience, within same gender interactions, women seem to be more willing to assume there are negative intentions behind someone's actions where as men seem more likely to write off any potential negative intention. I'm not sure if I've noticed any real difference when it comes to mixed gender interactions...

[astrogeek01]

I don't know; as usual, I'm probably an anomaly. There's a lot of teasing that goes on among my peers in my field as well, and given that it's pretty male-dominated...

In general, there's not much mean-spirited stuff that goes on, though. I think it's pretty obvious when people are trying to rile you up because they want to rile you up, vs when they're actually being mean. But, like I said, I've dealt with a lot of teasing my whole life so maybe what's obvious to me isn't obvious to most. Most of the time, I think people don't really tease to be *mean*. It's either joking-teasing (the majority) or trying to get a reaction.

[astrogeek01]

* though I should note that I have seen a trend lately among my students (who are ~10 years my junior at this point), and that is that the teasing that goes on could very well be construed as actually mean, even though I don't think that's the intent. It's a lot more of a cutting-down type of teasing. I'm not the only educator who's noticed that the trend has been this way over the last several years. It's kind of weird.

Hmm. So that very well might influence the study which was on college aged students.