Women are commonly assumed to be more emotionally turbulent than men: moodier, more volatile, and more likely to experience rapid changes in affect across the course of the menstrual cycle. Aside from being the basis of many a sexist joke, this assumption has had an impact on research, with cisgender women excluded from research due to apparent fluctuations in mood.
Building on research exploring fluctuations in rodents, a team from the University of Michigan has looked more closely at such variability in humans. Their study in Scientific Reports finds no difference in emotional variance between cisgender men and women, or between women who do and do not use oral contraception.
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