According to a new research ‘Words Like Weapons’ by Psychology of Women Quarterly finds that labelling a woman as “emotional” or telling her to “calm down” makes her point of view seem less credible. The authors highlight that generally, we tend to think that people are either rational or emotional, but they can’t be both; when a woman's arguments are attributed to her emotions, it suggests she’s not thinking clearly or rationally. As a result, the legitimacy of her arguments weakens.
This link between the “emotional” label and the legitimacy of a woman’s arguments was established by the researchers. Study participants read a dialogue between two people disagreeing. During the conflict, a woman or a man was told to “calm down.” When a woman was instructed to “calm down,” the participants rated her argument in the disagreement as significantly less legitimate. In a similar study, where the woman was labelled “emotional,” the researchers obtained the same results. In both situations, the woman’s credibility takes a hit.
However, researchers found that men’s legitimacy doesn’t take a hit when they’re labelled “emotional” or told to “calm down.” That’s because people don’t believe the “emotional” label when it’s applied to men. The researchers write that participants “believed the emotional evaluation when it was directed toward women, but did not believe it when directed toward men. Specifically, when both women and men were called emotional in identical circumstances, women characters (in the disagreement) were perceived as more emotional than the men characters.”
An article by Forbes suggests that female politicians are often easy targets for the “emotional” label because the job requires a passion for their convictions. The link between emotion and female politicians is so strong, some still believe women are unfit for the job. A 2019 study from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce found that about 13 per cent of men and women still have doubts about women’s emotional suitability for politics. That’s a whopping 1 in 8 people.