Breaking with conventional wisdom, this book integrates a wealth of perspectives and research-- biological, sociocultural, developmental--to explore the nature and extent of gender differences in emotional expression and the question of how such differences come about. In the book, nurture rather than nature emerges as the stronger force in fashioning gender differences in emotional expression. The book shows that whether and how men and women express their feelings varies widely from situation to situation and from culture to culture, and depends on a number of particular characteristics, including age, ethnicity, cultural background, power, and status. The book notes as especially pertinent the organization of the family, in which boys and girls elicit and absorb different emotional strategies. The book also examines the importance of gender roles--whether in the family, the peer group, or the culture at large--and the various patterns of emotional expression used to adapt to power and status imbalances. The book's chapters are: (1) "Introduction," exploring the complexities behind emotional expression; (2) "Understanding Emotional Expression"; (3) "Words, Faces, Voices, and Behaviors"; (4) "Physiological Arousal and Patterns of Emotional Expression"; (5) "Sad or Mad? The Quality of Emotions"; (6) "The State of the Art: Biological Differences?"; (7) "Transactional Relationships within Families"; (8) "Gender Identification and De-identification in the Family"; (9) "Fathers and the Family Climate"; (10) "Social Motives, Power, and Roles"; (11) "Stereotypes and Display Rules"; (12) "The Power of Peers"; (13) "The Health Consequences of Gender-Stereotypic Emotional Expression"; and (14) "Rethinking Gender and Emotion." (Contains 800 references.) (KB)