Who else who least feels what experts call social anxiety or interpersonal anxiety in certain situations: when we go to a soiree and we don’t know anyone, that day we have to present our point of view to co-workers, when we receive a Unexpected visit…
A group of Latin American researchers has tried to find out if such tension is felt in the same way by men and women , and for this they have carried out a macro-survey of 31,000 people of different ages, with an average of 25 years.
Volunteers had to rate their greater or lesser discomfort in the following scenarios: interacting with strangers, dealing with individuals of the opposite sex, speaking in public, expressing our discrepancies to someone, receiving criticism, speaking with people superior to us in the social ladder or professional, drinking in public, working in a group, working while being watched, and going to a party.
The first conclusion, as the researchers explain in the journal Personality and Individual Differences , is that nothing stresses us more – regardless of gender – than being reprimanded by someone . But the gap between masculine and feminine sensitivity can be seen above all in the second most voted assumption: that of having a conversation with someone of the opposite sex. Women, according to the respondents admitted, then have a much worse time than men.
The explanation could be found in the traditional role of passivity imposed by society on women. In addition, it is a subjective assessment of those who participated in the research, not real differences measured during the interaction , so the distorted image we have of ourselves in these situations may weigh.
