Doing gender by doing emotion?: Gender-specific development of the tendency to show sympathy in adolescence

The present study is concerned with the question of the gender-specific development of the tendency to show sympathy between the ages of 11 to 17. A total of 740 adolescents (403 girls und 337 boys) aged between I I and 17 were examined about their tendency to show sympathy with the help of two stimulus situations. The results showed a constantly high tendency to show sympathy by the girls in both stimulus situations. The boys' sympathy declined steadily with age as for the first stimulus situation but fluctuated from year to year with regard to the second stimulus situation. As for a small sample of 13-year old adolescents, the sex of the stimulus-object was varied for the second stimulus situation. In this sample the 13-year old girls showed significantly less sympathy for the opposite sex than for their own sex. The 13-year old boys showed tendentially less sympathy for their own sex than for the opposite sex. The results are discussed in the framework of the Theory of Emotional Schemata and the Group Socialization Theory.