You're less likely to notice if the women in your life are tired, according to NASA
People tend to underestimate how tired women are and overestimate how tired men are, a new study by NASA has found.
Researchers at the US space agency have discovered that, despite feeling fatigued, women still put effort into being sociable and expressive when speaking to others, while men are much less likely to do the same if they are tired.
But because of this effort, women are more likely to be perceived as less tired than they really are, while men are perceived to be more tired than they reported in the study. The study was published in the journal Sex Roles.
The researchers came across the finding as part of a study to monitor space crews for signs of fatigue, as it is a factor in accidents and errors that occur among them.
Research psychologist Morgan Stosic and her team asked a set of participants to take part in five-minute recorded conversations with strangers, and later to describe how tired they were during the conversations.
Another set of volunteers were asked to watch videos of the conversations with no audio, and to rate what they believed were the fatigue levels of the participants, from a scale of zero (not tired at all) to 10 (completely exhausted).
Stosic’s team found that, overall, the volunteers were "underestimating how much fatigue women themselves had reported but they were overestimating how much fatigue men had reported".
The difference between perceptions was significant, with women having their tiredness underestimated by about 1.3 points, while men had their fatigue overestimated by 0.9 points on average.
The reason for this was because women exhibited more sociable behaviour than men when they were engaged in conversation while being tired.
It was observed that women, on average, showed more expressiveness and attentiveness, including making more eye contact with the person they were speaking to.
Stosic explained: "Perceivers were using those behaviours as a cue to think that women were less fatigued."
The researchers added: "Fatigue is one of the most common health complaints, yet assessing it can be difficult when perceptions of others’ fatigue are distorted by gender bias.
"This research is the first to examine whether such a bias is present in the perception of men’s and women’s fatigue."
The study underscores yet another gender gap in how women’s experiences may be underestimated compared to men. Previous research shows that observers also underestimate women’s pain while overestimating how much pain men feel.
A 2021 study found that women’s pain are often discounted because of a "false belief that women are oversensitive to pain, and express or exaggerate it more easily", said Professor Amanda Williams, of University College of London Clinical, Education and Health Psychology.
In an article for The Conversation, she wrote: "An additional experiment showed that stereotypes drove these judgements: men’s pain was estimated higher by those who believed that the typical man endured pain better than the typical woman, and women’s pain was estimated lower by those who thought that women were more willing to report pain than men."
Read more about women's health:
Behind the rise of ‘preventative Botox’ and how it’s changing young women (Yahoo Life UK, 6-min read)
Doctor warns feeling tired could be sign of condition that can last years (SurreyLive, 2-min read)
Women 'suffer more from ME', according to largest ever study into the disease (Sky News, 3-min read)
