Keep calm! Gender differences in mental rotation performance are modulated by habitual expressive suppression

Area of Science:

• Cognitive psychology
• Neuroscience
• Gender studies

Background:

• Men often outperform women in mental rotation tasks.
• Gender differences exist in emotion regulation, particularly expressive suppression.
• Expressive suppression, more common in men, may influence cognitive performance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how gender and emotion regulation strategies affect mental rotation performance.
• To examine the impact of feedback on cognitive accuracy in relation to gender and emotion regulation.
• To determine if expressive suppression modulates gender-based differences in spatial cognition.

Main Methods:

• 28 men and 28 women performed mental rotation tasks of varying difficulty.
• Emotional feedback was provided after each trial.
• Participants' use of expressive suppression was assessed.

Main Results:

• Women reported less frequent use of expressive suppression than men.
• Women made more errors than men and were more negatively affected by failure feedback.
• Women who habitually used expressive suppression showed performance comparable to men.

Conclusions:

• Expressive suppression may mitigate gender differences in mental rotation accuracy.
• Using expressive suppression can improve cognitive performance after negative feedback, particularly for women.
• Emotion regulation strategies are a key factor in understanding gender-based cognitive variations.