Are women really more perceptive than men?

If I were to base my answer on an actual study, then my answer would be yes.

And this also confirms the age-old adage that women would always be more sensitive and perceptive than the guys. According to a Harvard study, women are generally better in being perceptive than men.

However, gay men and men who were into the arts (painting, writing, etc.) also showed perceptiveness/intuitiveness that was close to what women could offer.

Women were eighty seven percent more likely to understand the deeper nuances of a face to face conversation.

As for the males, it appears that we guys can only read body language correctly forty two percent of the time only. That’s a massive difference in perceptiveness if you ask me.

Now, within the group of women respondents those who already had children were more likely to be intuitive compared to women who were single and did not have children.

The increased intuitiveness is probably the result of having to care for infants and toddlers who did not have the ability to express themselves verbally and therefore, must be understood only though vocal communication (i.e. whining, laughing, gurgling, babbling, etc.) and non-verbal communication (gestures, facial expressions, movements, etc.)

Don’t think that researchers aren’t looking at the organic/biological basis of perceptiveness. According to research, women’s brains have more than ten dedicated areas used to study the behavior of other people. Men on the other hand, only utilize an average of six areas.

Here’s another striking difference between male brains and female brains: female brains were built for multi-tasking. A woman who is having a conversation can keep track of multiple topics at the same time.

A woman can also utilize several tones of voice to emphasize thoughts and emotions, unlike men who are generally more limited when it comes to modifying their vocal language during a conversation.

Now let’s take a short sojourn into an age-old debate regarding body language.

Is body language taught or is it something that is natural or intrinsic to people? And the answer to this question is open-ended: researchers now agree that some gestures are taught through culture while some appear to be transferred genetically.

For example, you won’t have to teach a child how to smile or laugh because a baby will already know how to smile or laugh in the first few months of life. You also do not have to teach a child how to scream or wail in frustration, anger or pain because those actions are also natural to children (and adults as well!).

Here are some more actions/gestures/expressions that are common throughout the world (that means culture barely plays a part when it comes to these body language signs):

Smiling (happiness)

Scowling (may signify depression, anger, anxiety, sadness)

Nodding the head (generally signifies an affirmative response)

Shaking the head from one side to another (generally signifies a negative response)

Shrugging the shoulders (generally signifies that the person does not fully comprehend what has been said or what is being discussed at that time

Researchers believe that the fourth item in our list is particularly innate to everyone. Here’s why: when an infant is being breastfed, he/she usually signifies that he does not want any more milk by moving his head to the side quickly.

This action unlatches the nipple from the child’s mouth. Toddlers also tend to shake their head from side to side so the adult who is spoon-feeding the child would no longer be able to give the child food.

You can imagine how this action can easily be used by a child later on in life to signify that he does not agree with something.

Both agreement and disagreement are easily learned even when a person has been born blind so we cannot fully argue at all that these gestures are simply mimicked or copied by infants/toddlers from their parents.